


Waiting

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff and Crack, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-12
Updated: 2010-06-12
Packaged: 2019-04-19 19:31:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14244219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rachel knows how to fight.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be my last lengthy story for a while, because I started this one before I finally had Caleb. It's like, 23,000 words long and I had like, 20,000 of it done before Caleb was born. It's taken me a week to write 3000 words, lol.
> 
> \--

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [3000 ish for this part]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight.

* * *

 

Rachel slipped into the choir room, extremely tardy, her clothes a little dirty, a few bruises on her face, arms and legs, a fat lip and a bitchy don’t-ask-what happened expression.

She also looked vaguely triumphant and the others desperately wanted to ask what the hell happened, but her bitchy don’t-ask-what happened expression was so unlike every other expression they’d ever seen her wear, that no one brought themselves to ask. They exchanged glances and Mr. Schuester looked like he was going to say something, but she just glared at him, defiant, and he went back to the day’s glee assignment.

She’d come in so late that there was only about twenty more minutes left of practice, and when it was over, she left the room as quickly as possible.

The next day, the bruises on her face, arms and legs were even more glaring than they were the day before because bruises were always worse the day after. The bitchy don’t-ask-what- happened expression was back, and it was the first time in quite some time that she didn’t get Slushied in the morning because she walked through the halls with that off-putting expression.

Ms. Pillsbury pulled her into her office to gently ask what happened, but Rachel merely looked at her and drolly explained that she fell and then left.

By lunch Jacob Ben Israel had posted the video footage he snapped the day before to YouTube and the whole school gathered over computers and smart phones to watch Rachel win a fight with four of the female members of Vocal Adrenaline.

Rachel’s explanation was blithe. “I have two gay fathers, why wouldn’t I know how to fight?”

Puck looked completely smitten and more than a little turned on. “Why don’t you do that more?”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Because my DNA isn’t mixed with Neanderthal DNA, Noah. I’ll only fight if I have to. I consider myself far too dignified to have to resort to a physical altercation.” She paused and eyed the other girls in glee, as if to send a message. “But I will if I have to,” she added meaningfully.

And it was true. Rachel would prefer it if she weren’t taunted, insulted and Slushied on a daily basis, but she figured it was high school and everyone famous always seemed to claim they were bullied in high school or would laugh and say they were big nerds even if they weren’t bullied.

As far as she was concerned, she was just paying her dues, and when she got to be famous and some interviewer would ask her what her high school experience was like, she’d smile and admit “I was wildly unpopular and uniformly disliked,” and even though it was completely true, Rachel knew there would be loads of people out there who wouldn’t believe her, just like she didn’t entirely believe the now-famous people who claimed to be unpopular in high school.

It was practically a pre-requisite and she was perfectly fine with putting in her time. Her memory tended to be short, anyway, especially when it came to bad things. It hurt her feelings now, but she didn’t think she’d still be smarting over pains of high school once she had enough distance from the experience. She hoped anyway.

\--

Quinn had no idea what it said about her that she liked boys like Puck who were vaguely barbaric over boys like Finn who were vaguely stupid, but sweet.

She didn’t _like_ Puck necessarily, but she found his complete disregard for other people’s feelings to be a little intriguing. It wasn’t just that he was attractive (and he was so incredibly attractive)-- it was that cocky, I’m-not-insensitive-I-just-don’t-give-a-shit personality. She found it sort of intriguing which was how she got knocked up with his baby in the first place. It was after she gave Beth away that she realized he was way better than he seemed, but he was still kind of a dick. She had to admit that even though Puck was a dick, she was more attracted to him than she was to Finn. She always had been, it was just that Finn was the more socially acceptable choice in boyfriends.

So it was surprising, but not _so_ surprising that she started to look at Rachel Berry in a whole new way after watching Rachel Berry gracefully kick the asses of four other girls from Vocal Adrenaline with a fierce but still somehow clinical efficiency.

She had to admit she had to watch the video a few times, blinking in confusion and disbelief. She wondered if it was really Rachel, but the lack of height and embarrassing outfit were confirmation enough. It started with just Rachel walking through the parking lot and Quinn thought about how Jacob Ben Israel was clearly stalking Rachel. Then Rachel was confronted by four of the girls from Vocal Adrenaline. There were some taunts hurled at Rachel, which Rachel accepted without much reaction. And then there was a shove and Rachel was on the ground. One of the girls straddled Rachel while she lay prone on the ground and cracked an egg right against her forehead. Even then, Rachel didn’t really respond, just sort of let it happen.

But once Rachel’s head was slammed a few times into the asphalt and the other three girls just started attacking, and it became clear after a few minutes that they weren’t going to relent, Rachel just seemed to snap.

She didn’t shout or scream or say anything, she just got herself off the ground somehow and _attacked_ , and there were yelps of surprise from the other girls, but Rachel didn’t respond to that. The fight was over fairly quickly, even when all three girls started attacking in unison. The other girls ran away and Rachel didn’t chase after them, she just walked away, ostensibly to clean up.

Quinn rewound and rewatched the video more times than she wanted to admit. It was… _hot_ and Rachel had _really_ great legs and _really_ nice arms.

But this was not news to Quinn.

She had to admit, she always thought Rachel was just kind of a nerdy, socially unacceptable pushover even if she’d always had a little thing for the other girl. Rachel never ducked from the Slushie attacks, never did anything about them and never defended herself any time someone insulted her. Quinn knew there were a lot of students who were a lot more objectionable than Rachel, but Rachel was one of those kids who never said anything about being treated poorly and Quinn thought that was at least 25% of the reason Rachel continued to be treated so crappy. In fact, a part of her thought Rachel sort of deserved to be treated like crap since she _let_ herself get treated like crap. She always thought of Rachel as sort of a doormat-- a lot like Finn, but seeing the way Rachel dispatched _four_ other girls who were bigger than she was, Quinn had to admit that it was highly possible Rachel just chose her battles.

A rumor started circulating that the video was fake, some desperate attempt on Rachel’s part to look more bad ass than she actually was so that people would think twice before they Slushied her or insulted her. A few girls even tried to pick fights. But Rachel went about her life, ignoring the challenges to fisticuffs and being unresponsive to the insults and Slushies-- just like always.

Life didn’t change much, but Quinn watched Rachel a little more carefully for a hint of the next time Rachel would snap. She really wanted to be around the next time.

\--

The next time happened a few weeks later when Brittany and Santana got caught making out in an empty classroom on campus. It was after school and one of the other Cheerios got dispatched to find them because Brittany and Santana were late for a Cheerios practice and Sue Sylvester was on a warpath. Sue Sylvester didn’t tolerate tardiness because if Mussolini could make the trains run on time while juggling the demands of being a totalitarian world leader, a bunch of teenaged harlots could manage to walk a few yards to the field on time.

Santana could not remember a time when she didn’t inspire a little fear. Even when Quinn, Puck and Finn were being Slushied, she saw people think twice about even _looking_ at her. But once that whore, Tiffany Taylor blabbed to the other Cheerios about her and Brittany, it was open fucking season, and not even Santana Lopez could watch her back _and_ her girl’s back _all_ the time.

The fight happened in the parking lot after practice.

Santana was pulling Brittany along, trying to make a fast break for her car to drive Brittany home when they were swarmed. Santana had a few minutes where she thought it was pretty funny that they were called Cheerios which was a brand of cereal of which a bee was the trademark because the other girls swarmed Santana and Brittany in seconds.

She tried at first to bluff them, stared them down and it looked like it was working, but once one of the girls threw the first punch (Santana swore revenge on Norah Whitsett), it was a free-for-all.

She held her own for a few minutes, but she had Brittany to protect and it was the whole goddamn team of girl Cheerios, minus Becky. She was losing and she got knocked to the ground and she knew it was pretty much over, she was going to lose her first fight, ever. She took some comfort in the fact that the fight was really unfair. She cast one look of apology at Brittany before she felt some of the girls being ripped off her and then there was Rachel fucking Berry tearing her way through.

Rachel was silent, but efficient and she was damn near robotic. It was kind of creepy.

Santana felt herself able to breathe again now that the mass of girls were away from her and then Brittany was hovering over her, crying.

“Santana. San.”

There was a shout and Santana turned to see Quinn running across the parking lot toward them.

The other Cheerios began to flee and by the time Quinn had reached them, the other Cheerios were gone, going off into different directions.

Quinn knelt beside Santana. “Are you okay?”

Santana glared at her. “Do I _look_ like I’m okay?” She wiped her hand across her bleeding mouth, but she only smeared more blood from her bleeding knuckles. She was sore, and she winced as she shifted. She was going to get those bitches back. “I am going to kill those bitches tomorrow.”

“You never look like you’re okay, you always look like you’ve smelled something really bad”

Brittany was still crying softly. “Santana.”

Santana reached out to touch near a cut on Brittany’s eyebrow. “I’m okay, Brit. Are you okay?”

Brittany swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

Quinn glanced over at Rachel who was sitting on the ground twenty feet away, holding her hand to her face. She walked over to the brunette and sat on the ground next to her. She put her hand on Rachel’s back. “Hey,” she said softly. “Are you okay?”

Rachel clutched at her nose where one of the girls got in a lucky shot. “ _Fuck_ ,” she griped, drawing the word out

Quinn never heard Rachel curse before, and it was a little startling.

“Are you okay?” she repeated.

Rachel seemed to remember her manners.

“I’m perfectly well, thank you,” Rachel said, standing up. She held her bleeding nose. It hurt, but she didn’t think it hurt enough to be broken. She had a pretty high pain tolerance, but she didn’t think people would cry about a broken nose if it didn’t hurt more. So she was certain it wasn’t broken. She glanced around for her discarded purse and found it a few feet away. She walked toward it to get out some tissues.

“Is it broken?” Quinn asked, following after Rachel.

“If it were broken, I think it would hurt more,” Rachel said matter-of-factly. “The fact that it is not more painful leads me to believe that though the injury to my nose looks a bit ghoulish, it’s nothing more than a bloody nose.”

Her voice was more nasal than usual because she was pinching her nostrils together to keep the blood from spurting out.  
  
Quinn sighed. “How can you still possibly talk so much?”

Rachel shrugged. “I think people who choose to blame injuries or pain for unpleasant changes in their personalities or behavior are very craven.”

Quinn sighed again. “What makes you think that you talking less would be an unpleasant change?”

Rachel fished out her Kleenex and held it to her nose. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

Quinn shook her head. “I wasn’t even involved. Once they saw me, they left.”

“Oh,” Rachel said. “Good.”

She looked over at Brittany helping Santana up.  
  
“Are they okay?” Rachel asked.

“I think so,” Quinn said.

“Good,” Rachel said, sounding relieved. She frowned. “That was a very unfair fight.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed. “Do you…do you need a ride home?”

Rachel shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

Quinn stared at a stain on Rachel’s shirt. “You’ve got blood on your shirt.”

Rachel looked down at her yellow top and scowled. “I can’t bleach a yellow shirt!” she exclaimed, outraged. She was so outraged she pulled her hand away from her nose, causing more blood to drip down onto her shirt which only ignited her outrage further. “It will take me forever to get this out, even if I presoak it for hours.”

By then, Santana and Brittany had approached them.

“Come on,” Santana said. “Let’s get cleaned up. I’ll buy you a slice of pie or something, Berry,” Santana said. “I’m hungry, and I want a burger.”

“That’s not necessary, Santana, but thank you. I felt it was a very unfair fight and therefore--”

“Just because you krav maga-ed some girls for me doesn’t mean I won’t krav maga _you_ ,” Santana said. “Come on, let’s go.”

“But I need to pre-soak this shirt or--”

“We’ll drop by your house first then.”

\--

It was the first time any of them had ever been in Rachel’s house before, and it wasn’t so different from what they expected. It was comfortably furnished and it seemed pretty nice. It was extremely clean though, nothing out of order, nothing out of place and didn’t feel particularly lived-in. There was a family picture above the fireplace with Rachel and her fathers, though it was old because Rachel was perhaps six years old in the picture, at the oldest. They waited in the living room while Rachel put her shirt in a bucket with some cold water and detergent and got cleaned up.

“Would you like to get cleaned up?” Rachel asked Brittany and Santana politely when she materialized into the living room.

“Thanks,” Brittany said, pulling Santana up and taking Santana by the hand.

Rachel directed them toward her bedroom and Rachel took a seat next to Quinn in the living room. She turned on the TV.

“Where did you learn to fight?” Quinn asked.

“On the street,” Rachel said with a straight face. “I was a young street tough looking for a place to call my own. He was a down on his luck cop trying to escape his past. Together, we--”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Ha ha,” she interrupted dryly. “Seriously.”

“At USA Martial Arts Studios, on Fourth and Franklin,” Rachel said. “My fathers put me in Tae Kwan Do when I was six, but I’m doing other stuff now. I feel it’s highly beneficial to me to be as versatile and learned in these things as I can, however, because I’ll never know if I need it for a role in the future.”

“Why’d they put you in Tae Kwan Do? You don’t seem like someone who’d be into that.”

“Because they’re gay men in a small Ohio town raising _me_ , Quinn. They suspected quite correctly that I would need to learn how to physically defend myself.”  
  
Quinn couldn’t think of anything to say other than “oh.”

\--

The news of the fight between Santana, Brittany, Rachel and the other Cheerios spread around the school and soon one of the boys on the football team asked Rachel out.

He was one of those boys who Quinn wasn’t sure was uglier than he was stupid, or stupider than he was ugly. Either way, he was the very definition of a Lima Loser, but he was popular because he was the best football player on a losing team. Quinn didn’t see the appeal, but Rachel seemed to like him well enough and Rachel enjoyed a minor surge in her popularity.

It was always guys like him who had girlfriends who were too good for him and Quinn had to admit that even Rachel Berry was far too good for a guy like Gary Thompson. Quinn was completely put off by the union, but she was more put off by the fact that it bothered her so much to see Rachel kissing some knuckle-dragging prick from the football team. It was just that Gary was so repulsive and though she loved to claim she found Rachel Berry completely repulsive, the truth was, she really didn’t.

Quinn had no idea what Rachel was doing with a guy like Gary Thompson who was the sort of guy who yelled “fag” at boys like Kurt and spat out chewing tobacco on the street. He was absolutely disgusting.

But Rachel continued to date him and Quinn wondered if maybe Rachel was just bored. She heard him bragging to Mike one day about “banging” Rachel, which Quinn knew for a fact was not true because once in glee, Santana asked Rachel if she’d slept with Gary yet and Rachel confirmed she hadn’t.

“Although I am not in the least bit ashamed to admit that I do have sexual urges, I have yet to sleep with Mr. Thompson or anyone else for that matter because I believe I am well within my rights to be choosey about who will be my first sexual experience. It can have long-lasting ramifications and I am not about to develop any sexual hang-ups at my age due to an impulsive sexual encounter.”

Gary was a pig, but he seemed to change for the better while dating Rachel. He didn’t spit on the ground anymore, he didn’t toss Kurt into the trashcan and he didn’t make “fag” comments to the boys at school of ambiguous or questionable sexual orientation. He even wore a sweater vest to school one day which Quinn found deeply disturbing. Quinn thought that was probably the appeal right there for Rachel-- a challenge to change someone for the better.

It figured.

And then it was over. And it was clear that Rachel dumped Gary rather than the other way around. The whole thing only lasted a few months and Rachel seemed fairly unaffected by the break-up but seemed pretty apologetic that Gary seemed so unhappy.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [5000ish for this one]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight.

* * *

 

Rachel and Quinn had few reasons to intersect outside of glee. They shared the majority of their classes together, but sharing classes didn’t necessarily mean two people had to socialize. In glee, Rachel had always kept her distance from Quinn, Santana and Brittany and even after Rachel came to Santana and Brittany’s aid against the other Cheerios, that did not change. So Rachel went about her life and Quinn went about hers, and their lives really had no reason to cross.

Then Rachel and Quinn were paired together on a Chemistry assignment to test pH levels with red cabbage juice. It was a homework assignment and because the smell of red cabbage was revolting, Quinn demanded they do the experiment at Rachel’s house. Rachel was amenable enough because her parents weren’t home much and they hardly used the kitchen since they were regulars of restaurants of delivery services and take-out menus when her fathers _were_ home.

Rachel and Quinn set up and Rachel passed Quinn a white apron. “Here,” she said. She put on an identical white apron.

“Thanks,” Quinn said. “These look like the aprons they have in Home Ec,” she said with a frown, fingering the rough material.

“These _are_ the aprons they have in Home Ec,” Rachel said. “I’ve temporarily procured two of them.”

Quinn made a face. “You _stole_ them?”

“Stealing implies that I’m not going to return them, which I intend to do. I merely borrowed these. ”

Rachel gave Quinn a cute, insouciant grin and the blonde couldn’t help but be a little charmed. She grinned back.

Quinn sighed and inwardly wondered just what it was about people with juvenile delinquent tendencies that she found to be so appealing. It didn’t fit with the way she was raised, but then again, the way she was raised hadn’t done much for her lately. She was back with her mom, so at least she wasn’t homeless anymore. But she was at a point in her life where she no longer felt like she was a teenaged harlot who deserved to get kicked out of her house for getting pregnant and that her parents were in the right for doing so. She’d had a baby herself and even though she’d given that baby away, she’d fallen in love with her. And she didn’t think a good parent would be so willing to kick their kid out. So she didn’t necessarily think the values and instincts her parents ingrained in her were the right ones anymore.

Still, wasn’t it just a widely-accepted fact that crushes on juvenile delinquents were socially unacceptable.

Rachel Berry was pretty rule-abiding, but she had no problem questioning or defying authority she felt was unfair or incorrect and she evidently felt that the rules against stealing (okay, temporarily procuring) didn’t apply to her.

“It just that we don’t have aprons here,” Rachel explained. “And I didn’t feel like buying them, but I didn’t want our clothes to get ruined either.”

Quinn thought that if Rachel had been the one to get her knocked up, she never would have had to worry about hospital bills, Rachel would have just figured out a way to get things done.

\--

“This smells terrible,” Rachel said, wrinkling her nose in disdain as she opened the pot of boiled red cabbage.

Quinn covered her nose with her hand. “This assignment is stupid.”

“It is,” Rachel agreed.

“When will I ever care if something is an acid or a base?”

“If you’re ever poisoned,” Rachel volunteered helpfully.

Quinn heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Why do you answer rhetorical questions?”

Rachel looked at her blankly. “I didn’t know it was. And it’s a question on our worksheet, sort of anyway.” Rachel looked at the worksheet and read : “Why is the distinction between an acid and a base important?” Rachel looked at her triumphantly.

“I’m sure Kellerman is going to love it if all we write is ‘if you’re ever poisoned.’”

“Maybe if we don’t say ‘you’ and make it more general by saying ‘if _one_ is ever poisoned,’” Rachel suggested. But she gave a little grin to show she was only kidding.

It truly made Quinn sad that she found Rachel to be endearingly cute at that moment instead of slap-worthy annoying.

\--

“So, what happened between you and Gary?” Quinn asked as they determined if common household products and items were bases or acids and their pH levels.

“We broke up, Quinn,” Rachel said.

Quinn rolled her eyes. “What _happened_ to make you guys break up?”

“I’m not certain why you want to discuss this with me,” Rachel said carefully. Her tone was polite, but her voice became a little cold and cautious.

“It’s girl talk, Berry,” Quinn said in exasperation. “Did you want to sit here and do this in complete silence?”

“Well, there are other things we can talk about other than Gary.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Fine, let’s talk about this vampire thing. Why is it so popular now?”

Rachel grinned. “I don’t know. I’m a bit mystified by its allure.”

“I know. Not only does Kristin Stewart have bitch face--”

“She does,” Rachel agreed.

“But Robert Pattison looks like he smells bad.”

“He does,” Rachel agreed.

“And when I saw all those billboards for the movie, I kept thinking it was an advertisement for some new TV show with a bunch of teenagers in one of those towns in Alaska where the sun only comes out a few days out of the year and that’s why they all looked so pale.”

“And they all suffered from seasonal affective disorder because of the little sunlight they were exposed to,” Rachel added.

“Exactly,” Quinn said.

“Totally.”

They shared a grin.

“Although,” Rachel said. “I believe Alaska is known for the fact that the sun does not set for 24 hour periods due to its location north of the Arctic Circle and therefore--”

“Rachel, I don’t care. I don’t want a meteorology lesson. The point is not that--”

“Alaska would be a terrible place for the traditional vampire due to the fact that it is so often sunny and--”

“Rachel--”

“I would find any depiction of vampires in Alaska to be unrealistic due to the sole fact that Alaska experiences the phenomenon of the midnight sun, which would make it very difficult for a vampire to mimic a normal existence which I would imagine is already very difficult due to--”

“You secretly love vampires, don’t you?”

Rachel crossed her arms. “No,” she denied adamantly. “I do not make things I love a secret.” She paused. “I was merely making conversation.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Bringing it on point,” she said. “The vampire thing. Lame, right? You know, _Twilight_ , _True Blood_ , _Vampire Diaries_ , it’s all lame.”

“Although when I was six, I did enjoy a movie on the Disney channel called _The Little Vampire_. However, I doubt that movie would endure the test of time.”

Quinn squinted, trying to capture a memory. “I think I remember that. I think I liked it, too.”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“No,” Quinn agreed. “It wasn’t.”

Rachel smiled. “Okay,” she said. “This last one is has a pH level of…5?” She guessed, squinting at it. “I’m not sure if this is more purple or violet,” she said, “so let’s just marry the two and call it a ‘5’”

Quinn wrote it down. “5. Got it. So we’re done?”

“Yes. Now we just need to write it up.”

Quinn groaned. “This assignment is stupid.”

Rachel gave her a tiny grin. “Unless you’re ever poisoned.”

“Right,” Quinn said. She gave Rachel a tiny smile. “Unless I’m ever poisoned.”

\--

Rachel was confident in only one thing: her talent.

She was fairly certain she was average in everything else-- appearance, intelligence, athletic ability, but she knew she was a talented singer and just like she pushed herself to be a better singer, she pushed herself to be better in the other aspects of life that she found herself to be lacking.

So she kept to a strict diet and exercise regime, she studied hard and not only did she read the textbook, but she sought out additional reference material. By the time she was sixteen, she’d had years of ballet, tap, swing, salsa, ballroom, hip hop and interpretive dance lessons. She’d had years of martial arts, and it wasn’t to defend herself, but to make her body _better_. She’d taken ice-skating lessons, guitar lessons, piano lessons, violin lessons, cello lessons and voice lessons. She didn’t indulge herself much, at least, not the way other people did. She had a lot of material possessions and she was prone to frequent self-indulgent bouts of self-pitying depression. But she didn’t indulge in a sweet tooth, or a hankering for salty foods. She didn’t want to get fat, after all. She didn’t indulge in sleeping in on the weekends, because she felt the key to success was self-discipline. She didn’t indulge in procrastination for school, because she thought it was lazy and as her fathers once told her, the Berrys aren’t lazy. She didn’t indulge herself in skipping out on lessons or training or leaning because she felt she could always be better and she was focused on always aiming higher. She worked for tomorrow because she knew she could be better tomorrow than she was today.

She was always, always on the search to make herself better because she wasn’t stupid or delusional-- she knew her dreams of stardom were going to be hard to come by, but she was going to make sure it was hard to fail. She was going to make sure that she would be hard to turn away, and she was going to make sure the only thing she wouldn’t be able to change about herself for a role was perhaps demographic things like her gender or ethnicity. Or possibly her height, but that’s what heels were for.

She was confident enough in her ability that she was going to leave Lima, Ohio, the day after she graduated from high school regardless of whether or not Julliard or NYU or the other schools she was planning on applying to in her senior year accepted her. She didn’t care what it took- she was willing to pay her dues and she was perfectly content with the idea of working retail, fast food, waitressing, dog-walking, office temping or _whatever_ to pay the bills just as long as she could still chase her dreams.

She also knew herself well enough to know that she just didn’t _fit_ in Lima, and it’s not even that she really wanted to-- after all, she felt she was destined for something greater than a small Midwestern town without a decent Chinese restaurant. But she wished she didn’t have to feel quite so out of place in her own hometown and she was hoping that if she left for somewhere bigger, it might be better for her.

One of the things that always filled her with a little longing was when she read books or watched movies about people who return to their small hometowns periodically to recharge from their bustling, hectic lives in larger metropolitan cities. She knew she would never have that. When she leaves Lima, she knew it would be for good. It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when,’ because even in the unlikely event that she doesn’t achieve stardom, she’s not planning on coming back to Lima. She will hock wares on the Home Shopping Network to pay the bills if she has to, but Rachel Berry planned on leaving Lima and never coming back.

It wasn’t that she hated Lima, exactly, although she thought she was well within her rights to resent the hell out of it. She just didn’t _fit_ in Lima, and she was counting down the days until she could leave and make a life for herself somewhere else. She was planning on fitting _somewhere_ because everyone had to fit somewhere, unless one was the Unabomber or had Schizoid Personality Disorder so that they preferred to be alone. Rachel held herself in slightly higher regard than the Unabomber and the mountain men with Schizoid Personality Disorder who _want_ their solitary lives, so she felt there was a place in the world out there for her, somewhere. She just had to find it.

And just like she was intent on making her dreams of stardom and fame come true despite the odds against her, she was intent on making her dreams of finally fitting in somewhere come true despite the fact her life until now has shown that it was probably unlikely.

She’d come to the realization that she liked girls as much as she liked boys, maybe even a little more. She still found herself attracted to boys-- she liked Finn, Noah, Jesse and Gary and she enjoyed kissing them, but when it came to wanting to have sex with them, she couldn’t do it.

She just didn’t want to.

She found herself looking at the other girls in school. At first, it was with clinical detachment, and she started to compile a mental list of the pretty girls in school and divided them into certain classifications-- pretty in a wholesome way, pretty in a slutty way, pretty but not in a way that would last, cute more than pretty, pretty more than beautiful, pretty but interesting-looking, more interesting than pretty, flat-out beautiful, etc. And then she found herself attracted to a few of the girls in school-- nothing serious, really, because most of those girls were mean to her.

(Quinn Fabray had long been classified into the ‘flat-out beautiful’ category, well before Rachel started doing that with other girls. But Quinn was complicated because she wanted to hate Quinn who was so mean to her, but found that she really couldn’t. She wasn’t attracted to Quinn, really, just found that she couldn’t flat-out hate her, even when she wanted to.)

She’d always been the kind of person who could have a crush on more than one person at a time, so it wasn’t all that surprising to her that she’d develop consuming crushes on three different girls at the school. They were all seniors, and she was still a junior, so she didn’t share any classes with them, but she looked forward to seeing them around campus and it was sort of thrilling to interact with them even when they were shoving her into a row of lockers or taunting her about her outfit. It didn’t bother her much because she didn’t harbor any delusions she’d actually date any of them. They were just crushes and more or less harmless and seeing them throughout the day sort of brightened hers, even when they weren’t nice to her.

In Chemistry, Kellerman passed back the pH level assignments and she and Quinn shared a look. They’d gotten an A on the assignment- a 96 out of 100, but there was a red sad face next to their “in case you’re ever poisoned” response.

Quinn approached her after class as everyone was filtering out into the hallway en route to their next class. Quinn and Rachel shared their next class (English) and so it made sense if they walked together, but they never had before.

“It’s your fault we only got a 96. I told you she wouldn’t like that response.” Quinn pointed emphatically to the returned assignment. “Look at this. It’s a sad smiley face. I’ve never--”

Rachel peered at Quinn’s worksheet. “Yours even has a frown on it,” she noted with amusement. Hers was only a sad face, but Quinn’s was frowny. She turned to grin at Quinn. “You got a frowny face.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into writing that!”

“No one told you that you had to. I suggested that our answers be identical because we did the assignment together, but I never forced you to--”

“I got a sad face!” Quinn said. “I’ve never gotten one of those in my life!”

Rachel reached out to pat Quinn’s arm comfortingly. “Would a cookie make you feel better? I’ll buy you a cookie. I’ve heard it is customary to buy sad children cookies in an effort to cheer them up over things like this.”

Quinn pulled her arm away and smacked Rachel’s hand. “Your fault! And you just got a sad face. _I_ got the frowny face! And it was your idea!”

“But it was an appropriate answer,” Rachel said, bewildered. “It says so in our text book. I mean, not specifically in the event of our teacher being poisoned, because that would be weirdly specific and frightening. But it gave an example of treating poisoning appropriately and--”

Quinn smacked the worksheet she was holding against Rachel’s arm. “This should have been a 100! She docked us for your response!”

Rachel nodded. “I share your frustration at not achieving a perfect score, but that wasn’t why we didn’t get a 100.” She gently pulled the worksheet out of Quinn’s hand and turned the page. She pointed to one of the questions with an ‘X’ over it. “We got that one wrong.”

Quinn’s cheeks reddened. “Oh.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a cookie?” Rachel teased.

Quinn gave her a dirty look and snatched the worksheet away. “Come on, muppet. We have to get to English.”

Rachel trailed after her, forehead furrowing in confusion. ‘Muppet?’ she wondered.

\--

Although it violated every personal rule she’d set up for herself governing appropriate behavior when it came to Rachel Berry, Quinn had to admit to herself that she’d developed a soft spot for the other girl. So even though it went against everything she had, she approached Rachel after glee practice to apologize for the minor freakout she had over the Chemistry assignment. It was probably just PMS, because Quinn liked getting good grades, in fact, she both demanded and expected it of herself, but she wasn’t the kind of girl like Suzy Wong to freak out over a 96 instead of a 100.

“Berry,” Quinn said.

Rachel paused and looked at Quinn expectantly. “Yes?”

“Sorry for freaking out on your earlier. You’re right, the poison answer was right and it’s not why she docked us.”

“Well, thank you for acknowledging that, Quinn.”

Rachel smiled at her, and it was sincere but breezy at the same time.

It made her stomach clench and her throat hurt a little to have Rachel looking at her like that, and she was a little befuddled by it. It was the only explanation Quinn had for what came next, because she had no idea why she said what she would soon say.

“So, are you going to buy me that cookie?”

Rachel stared at her, clearly taken aback. She’d honestly said it just to tease Quinn because the blonde had been behaving like such a child and from what Rachel understood plenty of parents tried to indulge and bribe their children with such treats as cookies, candy and gum.

Her own fathers were never into that-- daddy was a diabetic so the only sugar that was kept in the house was for emergencies only, and strictly off limits. In fact, the one time she did steal a package of M&Ms from the emergency drawer, she’s gotten in so much trouble for it from Dad, because he said if she did that, then Daddy wouldn’t have it in an emergency, and did she want to be responsible for making Daddy even sicker? She did not. She’d been seven or eight then and she never did it again.

And anyway, she wasn’t the kind of person to indulge a sweet tooth. She was at a point in her life when it didn’t take much more than a glass of water, her _Funny Girl_ DVD or an hour on the elliptical to self-medicate the sad away. She didn’t need sugar, alcohol, tobacco, meat or anything else she viewed as overly self-indulgent.

She’d only been teasing Quinn, and she never really had any intention to purchase the cookie, so it was kind of weird to have Quinn bring it back on her.

She peered at Quinn for a moment and then shrugged. “Okay. I’ll buy you a cookie.”

\--

Quinn and Rachel sat next to one another on a bench in the mall, Quinn happily indulging in a fairly large white chocolate macadamia nut cookie and Rachel sitting beside her, lazily people watching.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?” Quinn asked, holding the cookie out to Rachel.

Rachel shook her head. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips,” she joked.

She had a ballet teacher who used to tell her that, and she’d never forgotten it. She’d always been lucky to be thin, scrawny even. But she knew her metabolism could change and she wasn’t about to develop any habits or weaknesses for unhealthy things. She could just picture it, she’d give into a hankering for something sweet or maybe something salty one day and within a few years, she’d be talking to a doctor about gastric bypass and all her dreams of Broadway stardom would be dashed. She wasn’t going to give up Broadway for something as ridiculous as cookies and pasta. No thanks, no way, not ever. Discipline was the key to her life.

Quinn peered at her closely. She used to care more about that sort of thing, too, but getting pregnant and having a baby kind of put that stuff in perspective. She’d lost all the baby weight, which had taken some time because she didn’t breast feed, which was how pregnant women lost a lot of their weight. But her body wasn’t back to the way it was, and she was beginning to accept that. But that didn’t mean she’d stopped trying to get back her overall muscle tone. It just meant she’d come to see there were more important things in life.

She had a healthy baby girl who was with a good family-- a family so much better than she could ever give her, and that was enough. Even though her mother had taken her back, Quinn didn’t think that was enough family for Beth. After all, her mother had raised her, and Quinn didn’t think she was a good example of a well-raised kid. She wanted something better for Beth, something better than her and her learned-helpless mother.

Living back home with just her mother, Quinn realized that her mother was stuck in Lima for the rest of her life, but she didn’t have to be. But she also knew that she would be the one to take care of her mother once she got settled into her life somewhere else. She wanted a better life for Beth than Russell and Judy Fabray had given her, but she wanted a better life for herself, too.

She didn’t want to be ungrateful, because as much as her parents had hurt her, they’d raised her and loved her, too. It was just that she dreamed of something better now, too.

She’d wanted something better for Beth and had given that to her. Now she wanted something better for herself, too. Because having Beth made her realize that there were more important things in life than all the things she’d previously valued. Like pretending to be perfect.  
  
“You’re skinny,” Quinn told Rachel. She held her cookie out for Rachel to take. “Have some. Don’t buy me a cookie to turn me into a fat ass and not have some with me,” she joked.

Rachel shook her head. “I’m vegan. That has eggs in it, probably anyway. Cookies have eggs, right?”

Quinn nodded. “I think,” she said. “Okay, fine. Don’t have any,” she said simply, not wanting to push it.

Rachel smiled at her. “Thank you though.”

They sat mostly in silence while Quinn continued to eat her cookie. She had to be PMSing because it was really the only time she actually craved things like cookies.

“You were good in glee today,” Quinn said.

“Thanks,” Rachel said. “You were really…” Rachel trailed off, distracted.

Quinn followed Rachel’s gaze and saw Megan Thorton, a senior on the soccer team. Rachel stared at Megan, and then Quinn just _knew_.

Rachel Berry liked girls.

Rachel turned her attention back to Quinn and realized Quinn had caught her staring. She blushed.

“You were really good today, too,” Rachel said, looking away. She stood up. “I need to go to a ballet lesson. I should go,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

Quinn watched her leave.

She just knew. Rachel Berry liked girls.

\--

Quinn wasn’t sure if she liked girls or not, but she’d long realized that she liked _Rachel Berry_. It wasn’t something she was comfortable admitting, even to herself, but she’d liked Rachel ever since they were in middle school together when she overheard just-transferred Rachel tell a teacher “I find these questions about my fathers to be highly inappropriate and hostile and I refuse to submit to your interrogation.”

Rachel was completely unlike anyone she’d ever known, completely unlike anyone in Lima and it turned out Rachel had grown up just a few blocks away from her. Rachel went to a small private school from kindergarten through mid-seventh grade until she got expelled for constant questioning of authority, but that didn’t explain why Quinn had never seen Rachel around before. Not at the parks growing up, or the mall or even restaurants around town.

Seeing Rachel for the first time had been one of those really affecting, truly memorable experiences.

Rachel was short and skinny without much in the way of breasts. She was wearing a skirt to show off legs that were chicken-skinny more than anything else. Her sweater was truly ridiculous-- there was a depiction of a family of _kittens_ on it and Quinn could hear the other students snickering the moment Rachel walked into homeroom.

Rachel was shorter, smaller and less developed than nearly every other girl in the class, except for Denise Zinderman, who even now still had a boyish sort of body. Rachel wasn’t developed hot like Brittany or bitchy hot like Santana or untouchable hot like Quinn herself was, but there was _something_ there that made Quinn stare at her.

Even back then, Rachel looked more amused by the rest of the world than anything else. Over the years, when the insults and taunts of their classmates became more pointed and cruel, Rachel started to look a little bewildered. But back then, Rachel was twelve and one of the younger members of their class but she carried herself in a way that made her seem older.

Rachel’s eyes flitted across the room, taking in individual faces. When Rachel’s eyes came to rest on Quinn’s face, Quinn felt herself blush and shift uncomfortably.

She did _not_ like that feeling one bit and she decided on the spot that she hated Rachel’s guts.

The feeling of hate never fully went away, and she did take a bit of malicious joy in Slushieing and insulting Rachel. Rachel made her question her own perfection, and her ability to fit into what was considered “normal” and so she did take joy in tormenting Rachel.

But she never stopped observing Rachel either, and she was fairly certain that she picked up on the fact that Rachel finally grew her breasts toward the end of eighth grade before Rachel herself did. Quinn suspected she knew this before Rachel did because she watched the way Rachel’s newly grown, but still fairly modest breasts bounced in her gym shirt. Rachel hadn’t needed to wear a bra up until then and Quinn felt it was incumbent upon her to point it out.

“I know you don’t know what to do with those, Man Hands, since you don’t have a mom” Quinn said, pointing derisively toward Rachel’s modest chest. “But you’re supposed to wear a bra.”

Rachel immediately turned pink. It was a Tuesday, and nothing changed for a few days, but once the weekend passed, Rachel came back to school on Monday clearly wearing a bra.

The crush never went away, it was always there somewhere in the background of the taunts, insults and Slushies she hurled at Rachel. She never stopped watching Rachel in class, never failed to take notice of what Rachel was wearing or who she was talking to and she never stopped thinking about Rachel.

She knew the way she treated Rachel said more about herself than it did about Rachel, but she also knew that none of their peers would be savvy enough to pick up on that, probably not even Rachel and Rachel was really the only person likely to pick up on that sort of thing, if she weren’t the one tormented.

Quinn didn’t like that bullying Rachel made her feel better-- it said a lot about herself that she didn’t like and made her feel like she inherited more from her father than just a talent for juggling numbers. But she couldn’t stop when Rachel never tried to make her to, and she started to feel like maybe Rachel deserved it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [5000 ish for this one]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight.

 

* * *

One of the many disadvantages of living in a small town was that Rachel had no idea how she could meet girls who were interested or even just curious about other girls. Brittany and Santana had one another, and although Rachel wasn’t sure exactly what the statistical probability was, she was certain that she, Brittany, Santana and Kurt pretty much fulfilled the gay kid quotient at school.

There weren’t any gay clubs in Lima-- none that she knew about anyway. Most of the ones she looked up on the internet were in Columbus which was a little far for her. And anyway, she wasn’t deluding herself into thinking she could get in without ID and while she was extremely resourceful, she had no idea how to get a fake ID.

She’d been thinking long and hard about how she could possibly meet someone who could confirm some things for her and she’d pretty much resigned herself that she’d have to wait until college when she met Lauren Prescott.

If she’d had a crystal ball into the future, she would have just waited until college.  
\--

Lauren Prescott was instantly recognizable to Rachel as one of the girls on Vocal Adrenaline, but Lauren wasn’t one of the girls who tried to beat her up that one day after school.

It felt like déjà vu to meet with Lauren in the same place she met Jesse and Rachel wondered if she was being set up.

But Lauren was weirdly intense and insistent and Rachel just went with it.

She enjoyed kissing Lauren and feeling how soft Lauren was, how sweet she smelled, the way Lauren’s long hair tickled at Rachel’s neck when they were laying together. But she didn’t enjoy it any more or any less than she enjoyed making out with Noah, Finn, Gary or Jesse.

But she stayed with Lauren, even when she suspected she was being played, because really, why the hell not? She was lonely, she was curious and well, she was a little horny, too. So she went along with it.

Besides, Lauren kept her a secret from Vocal Adrenaline and Rachel kept Lauren a secret from New Directions and they went on that way for a few months and it seemed more or less okay.

It’s only after Lauren told her “I love you,” when they hadn’t even slept together that Rachel realized she was in over her head. She thought it was just a fling, something to pass the time in their dull small town that was like Dogpatch, where nothing changed but the time. She didn’t think it was _love_ for either of them.

She wanted to make it painless, but she wanted to make it over, too. There was no way it could be anything other than ‘over’ because she had no desire for their relationship to get deeper and she did not believe she just needed time to fall in love. Lauren Prescott was just fling-material, someone to talk about in the future with someone she actually did love while they shared romantic histories. Lauren Prescott would never be someone she could love.

She could admit that she didn’t go about it in the best way and she felt terrible when Lauren started to cry. She felt less terrible when she felt the sting of Lauren’s palm against her cheek and then Lauren’s fists hitting out wildly. She let Lauren hit her for a while, feeling like she kind of deserved it for being kind of an asshole about the whole thing. But after a while, even she got tired of being someone’s figurative and literal punching bag and she showed Lauren to the door.

“What’s with the bitch face?” Santana asked her bluntly in glee the next afternoon.

Rachel glared at her and Santana glared back.

Santana cocked her eyebrows ever so slightly and Rachel looked away, completely exasperated.

“Hey, Berry. What’s with the bitch face?” Santana asked again, and she started to chuckle. Brittany joined in and Rachel crossed her arms in exasperation and huffed.

Later, when they sat down again after a dance number, Brittany took the seat behind Rachel and ran her fingers through Rachel’s hair.

“Don’t have bitch face,” Brittany whispered into Rachel’s ear. “It’s kind of Santana’s thing.”

Rachel grinned a little and turned to look at Brittany who winked at her.

“You okay?” Brittany asked, friendly concern very sincere and apparent in her blue eyes.

Rachel smiled. “Yeah.”

\--

After glee practice ended that day, Brittany poked Rachel in the shoulder.

“We’re getting something to eat, and you’re coming.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Am I?”

Brittany gave her a dazzling smile. “Yes.”

Rachel shrugged. Not even Puck put up a fight with Brittany. She grabbed her belongings and followed. She thought it would be pointless to argue or protest even though she didn’t really want to go with Brittany, Santana and Quinn.

Lauren had been texting her and calling her incessantly all day and she just wanted to go home and pretend everything was fine. Her room was one of her favorite places in the world, and it was really easy to pretend everything was fine when she was in it.

Kind of like that song by the Beach Boys, even though it made her feel woeful and pitiful to admit it.

\--

Rachel stared out the window of the diner, her dressing-less salad half eaten. She tucked her chin into the trench of her palm and suppressed a sigh.

“You still have bitch face,” Santana said. “Maybe if you ate a burger, you wouldn’t have bitch face.”

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t have bitch face,” she said absently, continuing to stare out the window.

She froze when she saw Lauren and some of the girls from Vocal Adrenaline walking past. Lauren was laughing, but her laughter died when she happened to glance over and see Rachel staring at her. Lauren went still and she stood there for a few moments staring at Rachel who stared back.

Quinn, Santana and Brittany glanced at what captured Rachel’s attention.

“Aren’t they from Vocal Adrenaline?” Brittany asked.

Rachel didn’t respond. She stared at Lauren who looked so upset, near tears and Rachel felt guilty again before Lauren slammed her hand on the glass window, right where Rachel’s face was.

“You’re a fucking BITCH,” Lauren shouted, before she and her friends walked away.

Rachel turned away from the window and she knew that _now_ she had bitch face.

Santana, Brittany and Quinn looked at her curiously.

“What was that about?” Quinn asked.

“Nothing,” Rachel said sullenly. “Can you get out? I need to use the restroom.”

“Sure,” Quinn said, slipping out of the booth to let Rachel out.

Rachel came back to the table a few minutes later.

“Berry, if you’re still having problems with those skanks from Vocal--”

Rachel cut Santana off quickly. “There’s nothing going on.”

Santana cocked an eyebrow and stared at her.

Rachel stared back.

And the topic was dropped.

\--

Santana found Rachel’s surliness to be amusing and did not object to Brittany’s desire to hang out with Rachel. But eventually Rachel’s surliness dissipated and she was back to her loquacious self, but by then Santana had developed a twinge of affection for Rachel and only sighed with exasperation every time Rachel opened her mouth to speak. Which was a lot.

Soon, Santana, Brittany, Rachel and Quinn were hanging out fairly regularly, frequently in various establishments around town, but sometimes at one another’s homes. Quinn didn’t feel like bringing anyone home because her mother was still depressed about the divorce from her father and consequently wanted to be over-involved in her business. Brittany’s house was always chaotic because of her little sister and her tea-party having, Barbie-wielding, Disney channel-watching legions of friends. Santana’s mother was home a lot, and tended to hover. So that left Rachel’s house because Rachel’s parents were gone a lot.

It was during this period that Quinn’s long-held but deeply repressed crush on Rachel started to blossom into full-on lust and want with a few fantasies of lying around on the weekend watching movies (but not musicals) and making dinner together thrown into the mix.

It was mortifying.

\--

She had it bad. She had it bad for Rachel Berry.

The crush was always there-- since the seventh grade, but at least she could ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening. Rachel’s embarrassing fashion sense, her tendency for didactic ramblings and her overly serene attitude in the face of insults was sort of annoying. Rachel was generally unflappable and Quinn liked to believe that she tended to…flap people. The fact that Rachel seemed more or less immune to her charms really irritated Quinn.

Unlike every girl she’d ever known-- including Santana(who would protest, but it was true), Rachel had never shown the slightest desire to be her friend. Every other girl was always eager to do her bidding or to impress her, but Rachel never showed any inclination toward that sort of thing. It was another thing that had fueled her deep-seated grudge against Rachel.

But the crush was getting much harder to ignore now that they were friends.

She’d watched Rachel for so long, observed everything about her that it was kind of a shock when she actually got to know Rachel. Quinn knew _about_ her, but she didn’t really know her.

There were some things that were well-known about Rachel-- like her preference in movies tended to run towards those based on musicals or that her preference for music tended to run toward Broadway musicals. But Rachel turned out to have a secret passion for Motown and a lot of other music from the 1950s through the 1970s, which was secretly Quinn’s favorite eras in music. It’s why the music she chose for glee tended to be from years that were _long_ before her birth

In better days when she was little, her mother used to sing to her, and it was always the music of people like Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark. She was always a Daddy’s Girl, but he worked a lot and so she spent a lot of time with her mother and her sister. And before her overly serious Daddy would come home, her mother would turn on some music and her mother would sing along and dance with Quinn in the living room.

It hurt her sometimes to hear those old familiar songs-- she thought of her mother, her sister and her father-- and happier times when she could pretend they were a happy family. They’d all been so good at keeping up appearances even with one another and Quinn could acknowledge that her childhood had more or less been happy because her parents kept a happy face on around her. So sometimes it hurt to hear the music that her mother filled their house with, but most of the time, it was comforting and reminded her of a time when her life didn’t feel so uncertain.

Rachel had a turntable and record collection that were clearly older than she was, and sometimes Rachel put on some of those old records that Quinn used to listen to with her mother and they danced around the bedroom until Santana got tired of it and wanted to put something on that was recorded after they were born.

Quinn was a secret nerd who loved to read when she was a kid. Her parents would fight, her sister would ignore her and she would turn the music up in her room and read a book to block out the arguing, the slamming doors and the inevitable crying. Eventually, as she grew older, the books were replaced by friends who weren’t imaginary and boys who wanted to slip their hands under her bra. She didn’t consider it a particularly fair trade, but it got her out of her house and it was easier to pretend she had a perfect family when she was out and about with fair-weather friends than when she was stuck in her bedroom with a book. Still, she kind of missed it and she looked at Rachel’s massive book collection with a twinge of envy.

“I don’t necessarily _like_ it,” Rachel said, when Brittany asked if she liked to read. “I just feel I should be well-read.”

Brittany looked at her quizzically. “Why would you do so much of something you don’t love?”

Rachel cocked her head to the left and stared at Brittany before she released a low chuckle.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” she admitted.

She never really thought about it much, because she loved to sing and she always thought everything else she did, even when it seemed insanely self-punishing and austere to herself was the key to making sure she’d get to do what she loved as a profession one day. The harder she worked, the more likely she’d be successful.

\--

Frequently when the four hung out, Santana and Brittany would wander off, leaving Rachel and Quinn alone to stare uncomfortably at one another. Rachel would always scold Santana and Brittany for using her home as a No-Tell-Motel, but she wasn’t particularly angry about it as long as it didn’t happen on her bed, and it never did.

“I liked this book,” Quinn said one day when they were waiting for Santana and Brittany to come back from the kitchen. “I guess you liked it, too.” She sprawled on Rachel’s bed and thumbing through an old, worn out copy of _A Wrinkle In Time_. A lot of Rachel’s books were pristine and clearly had only been read through once, but there were a notable few with the spines broken and marked up which clearly had been read numerous times.

Rachel blushed. “I did,” she affirmed. She wanted to snatch the book out of Quinn’s hands because it felt too personal for Quinn to be flipping through a book she’d clearly loved so much. She didn’t want Quinn to see the passages she’d underlined or the pages she’d dog-eared. It wasn’t like a book for school where she underlined the passages she knew would be important for a test-- that was a book she read for leisure and every mark in that book was something that had been meaningful to her. But she also knew snatching that book out of Quinn’s hands would only raise more suspicions.

Quinn wanted to ask Rachel what she loved about the book, but Santana and Brittany came back. They looked flushed and it’d taken them twenty minutes to get glasses of water, so it was clear what they’d actually been doing.

“Brit wants to go watch a movie,” Santana said in a voice that indicated that they were all now going to watch a movie.

“Okay,” Rachel said. “Just put the book back on the shelf,” she told Quinn as she got up from her chair at her desk.

“Okay.”

\--

It got to a point where they didn’t need a Santana and Brittany buffer and could hang out together on their own. It happened gradually, and it wasn’t a big deal. It just happened one day when Quinn wanted to hang out, Brittany had a doctor’s appointment and Santana was going with her because apparently sixteen year olds still had to get immunization shots and Brittany loathed needles.

Rachel never initiated their after-school hangouts, which bothered Quinn a little bit for reasons for which she remained a little uncertain. It was usually Santana or Brittany who initiated and she and Rachel just kind of got swept along, but Quinn had suggested a few times that they all hang out as well. Rachel never did.

Even when she and Rachel started hanging out one-on-one, it was always Quinn who asked, never Rachel. It started to feel a little uneven and she only liked it when her relationships were uneven if it were uneven in her favor. It didn’t feel that way with Rachel.

They were listening to Leonard Cohen on vinyl who Rachel insisted would grow on Quinn, but so far, that hadn’t happened.

“His voice is weird and his songs are so sentimental,” Quinn complained. “He’s that guy who threatens to drink himself to death if you break-up with him and won’t go away.”

Rachel was agog. “He is not!”

Quinn was utterly amused by the look on Rachel’s face. “Aren’t I entitled to my own opinion?”

Rachel sputtered for a moment and then replied “not if it’s the wrong one!”

Quinn laughed. “You’re so bossy.”

“I am not!”

Quinn raised an eyebrow and fumbled through her purse to pull out her compact. She opened it and held the mirror up to Rachel’s face. “Rachel, yourself. Yourself, Rachel.”

Rachel looked at her, puzzled.

“I’m just making introductions,” Quinn said. “Since _clearly_ you’ve never met yourself.”

Rachel grinned at her. “Funny,” she said dryly.

“I thought so,” Quinn said.

Rachel regarded her quietly for a moment and Quinn thought it was possible that Rachel was mad at her.

“Who threatened to drink himself to death if you broke up with him?” Rachel said, baffled.

Quinn gave her a lazy smile. “For someone so dramatic, you’re really literal.”

Rachel grinned at her and lifted up the needle on her turntable and put the record back into its sleeve. She put her iPod into its deck, hit shuffle and resumed her previous position of lying on her back on the floor before Quinn distracted her.

They’d listened to a few songs when Quinn rolled onto her stomach and peered down over the edge of the bed at Rachel who had her eyes closed while she listened.

“Hey,” Quinn said.

Rachel cocked open one eye. “Yes?”

“How come you never ask us to hang out?”

Rachel opened both her eyes. “Who is this ‘us’ that you’re referring to?” she asked. She had a pretty good idea, of course, but she was stalling for time. “Because other than me, and obviously I’m not going to ask myself to hang out, I only see you in here, and ‘us’ implies that there is more than one.”

“I meant Santana, Brittany and me,” Quinn said with exasperation. “God, are you retarded?”

“That is not a nice word to use so casually,” Rachel chided. “It’s derogatory in that context.” She paused. “I would imagine in most.”

“Oh, shut up,” Quinn said irritated. She rolled back onto her bed and flipped through the magazine she brought.

Rachel didn’t ask to hang out because she suspected that this whole thing was some kind of prank. She was sure they were trying to lull her into some false sense of security and then when she’d ask to hang out, they’d laugh in her face and incredulously ask her if she really believed they were friends.

She didn’t see Brittany doing it, despite the fact that Brittany was capable of bitchery, but she saw Santana and Quinn as being capable of it, and Brittany tended to go along with Santana.

She hung out because she was lonely and she had a pretty solitary existence. She could go a whole day without anyone talking to her, which didn’t mean she ever went a whole day without talking. It just meant she could go an entire day, maybe even an entire week without having someone address her directly. Her fathers didn’t really initiate conversation with her and she didn’t initiate conversation with them. They had some really good days together, now and then, like birthdays which they always made special. But for the most part, she’d long drifted apart from her fathers, and her fathers had gradually drifted apart from one another until they were all leading very separate lives in the same home. But her fathers had drifted away from her as a solid unit long before they’d drifted away from each other.

When she was home with her fathers, and it was rare they were all home at the same time, it was like they were all in suspended animation or something. She was in high school, but they talked to her like she was a little kid. They asked her stuff about when the next Open House at school was, and there hadn’t been any Open House or Back to School Nights in quite some time, not since primary school. They talked to her like she was eight years old again and she suspected it was because they had no idea how to talk to her in any other manner.

She was an only child and her parents didn’t bother with her much. Once she was old enough to wipe her own butt and her own nose, she ceased to be interesting for them.

That didn’t mean she felt unloved-- she _knew_ she was loved, but her parents were busy and she was more or less a good kid.

If she had any problems-- if she were ditching school or getting in trouble, her parents would be all over that. But she had perfect attendance, she had great grades, she was active in extracurricular activities and she wasn’t much of a behavioral problem, so her parents didn’t seem much of a reason for intervention or involvement. They paid the bills of her extracurricular activities, and all of her lessons, they gave her spending money and she had whatever she wanted. She didn’t see much of a reason to complain such because she didn’t get the attention she wanted.

Still, she spent so much time alone growing up, she really wasn’t sure how to ask to hang out with someone when it wasn’t task-oriented, like a school assignment or something for glee.

Even if she were confident that Quinn, Santana and Brittany weren’t playing some joke on her, she still wouldn’t know how to ask “do you want to hang out?” without the fear of rejection. She was okay with having Slushies thrown in her face, but the thought of being told “no” made her anxious.

“Hey,” Quinn said, peeking her head over the edge of the bed again so that her blonde hair cascaded down. She was feeling vaguely apologetic for the ‘retarded’ comment. “Do you want to get some dinner? My treat. We can go to that vegetarian Mexican place.”

Rachel was still trying to explain that vegetarian didn’t necessarily mean vegan, but she’d more or less given up. She gave Quinn a smile.

“Sure.”  
\--

Quinn thought it was completely masochistic that she’d hang out with Rachel so much when she harbored not-so friendly and definitely not platonic thoughts about the brunette. She always thought masochism was something best left to Rachel, but apparently she was pretty good at it as well.

Getting to know Rachel had only made her crush more intense. Quinn had no idea what she thought would happen because Rachel was fairly nice to everyone, so it wasn’t like she’d discover that Rachel was actually this colossal bitch or something.

Rachel was nice and polite to _everyone_ everywhere she went. She always tipped 20% and blushingly admitted that she was certain she’d have to bus a few tables while she chased her dreams in a few years so she hoped people would be equally generous with her. She was funny and thoughtful-- she really wasn’t all that different from the way she presented herself to the world.

It was just that it was the first time in the years they’d known each other that Quinn allowed herself to really look, to really see.

It wasn’t all positive, of course. Aside from some of Rachel’s well-known faults like talking too much and being too single-minded about her career path, Rachel was also extremely anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive. Her list of “do not eat” was at least five times as long as “do eat.” Rachel was skinny-- the smallest girl in glee, but she was obsessive about her weight and it was fairly clear to Quinn that Rachel’s choice to be vegan had less to do with morals or health and more to do with putting limits on her diet.

It was at the point that Quinn strongly suspected an eating disorder, but she just wasn’t sure what pamphlet to slip into Rachel’s locker, because Rachel _did_ eat, just not enough of it, and apparently she’d already tried bulimia but found it gross. She just didn’t think it was _normal_ to have such austere eating habits, even if Rachel Berry was as far from normal as anyone was going to find in Lima, Ohio.

Rachel was stubborn about her exercise regime-- she had a morning _and_ an evening schedule and she never veered from it, so Rachel could be expected to kick them out at 8:30pm if they were at her house or would leave wherever they were at 8:15pm in order to get home for her evening workout. It was annoying when they were having fun and Rachel had to be the figurative rain on their literal parade.

In fact, Rachel was extremely married to routine in general and she got frustrated from any major deviation. She had a system for studying and she prioritized according to exams and then the difficulty of concept. She took fifteen minute breaks now and then, but only because she read somewhere that it made information actually sink in, and she used a _timer_ for those fifteen minute breaks. It was annoying. In the unlikely event Rachel ever joined the military, she would do just fine in boot camp, at least, when it came to schedules.

Quinn’s war veteran grandfather who was a real asshole about time management was less of a stickler for schedules and more tolerant of tardiness than Rachel.

She was secretive, too, which was weird because Rachel was usually the first person to broadcast business that a lot of people would consider to be personal. But Rachel seemed to have a line going down somewhere in her life and she didn’t share any of the details past a certain point. It was a frustrating experience because she’d picked up on the fact that Rachel was able to simulate a false sense of intimacy and camaraderie.

But the fact was fairly apparent that Rachel knew more about the lives of Quinn, Santana and Brittany than they knew about Rachel’s, but it wasn’t easy to pick up on that fact when Rachel called her therapist a charlatan (without explaining why) or complaining about some vegan recipe she’d tried but failed at (because the directions weren’t clear.) Rachel knew how to share just enough information to give the appearance of intimacy without actually being intimate and Quinn had only recently developed the ability to distinguish the two.

But despite all that, Rachel just grew on her more and more. Quinn was the sort of person who liked a person until she got to know them and they annoyed her, so it was a new experience for her to have someone actually grow on her.

The fact that person was Rachel Berry made it even worse in Quinn’s mind.

But the worst thing of all was that she _knew_ Rachel liked girls and Quinn still had to languish with a secret crush. Okay, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of it, but she’d seen the way Rachel looked at Megan Thorton that day at the mall when Rachel bought her a cookie. Quinn recognized that look so she was fairly certain that Rachel liked girls.

Rachel liked girls, but she never gave any indication that she liked Quinn that way and it was becoming increasingly more difficult for Quinn to keep those feelings to herself. But she knew she had to, no matter what-- at least for now.

She was at a point where she thought she and Rachel would be friends for a long time, the way she was friends with Santana and Brittany. She’d had some problems with Santana and Brittany, though more Santana than Brittany, but she was planning on being in touch with them for a really long time. She’d come to recognize the value of friends and now that she knew her family was unreliable-- friends were all she had.

She wanted to repress her crush on Rachel Berry to the point it went away. That way, in the near future, near enough that they were young enough to still be hot and not wrinkly and old, and free from the demands of significant others and whiny children, but far enough that high school seemed like a distant, sad memory, she planned to let it slip and make a joke of it.

She could almost imagine it-- an older version of herself telling an older version of Rachel (who by then mercifully developed a fashion sense that wasn’t quite so painful to look at), that back in high school (well, from middle school through high school, but who admits such things?) she’d harbored a little crush on Rachel. And then she’d laugh and Rachel would laugh and nothing would come of it, and she could finally be free of it. “I just wanted to get it off my chest,” she’d say with a little laugh. “It’s been so long., I can’t believe I never told you before, it seems so silly now.” And then Rachel would agree, and then they’d both laugh. They’d both be somewhere away from Lima, maybe New York, maybe LA, or Chicago or Boston. Just some place away from Lima.

When she thought about this, she always pictured that she and Rachel would be in the same city, not far away from one another.

That was her _plan_ , but Quinn had recently discovered (by getting unexpectedly pregnant by a boy who thought “trust me” was an appropriate birth control plan) that few things ever went according to _her_ plans.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [2500 ish for this one]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight.

* * *

 

It started out innocently enough. They were working in Rachel’s dining room on another assignment for Chemistry which amounted little more than a basic science project, like back in primary school with poster board. But they need a knife to cut through some plaster and Rachel had her hands hopelessly tangled in duct tape and wires.

“Do you have any knives in the kitchen?” Quinn asked, already moving toward the adjoining kitchen.

Rachel shook her head. “Not for this,” she said. “I have a Swiss army knife in my nightstand drawer… ” She started to move her hands toward her teeth to rip away the duct tape, but then seemed to rethink. “I’m trapped!” she said with a little squeak. “You’re going to have to get it while I disentangle myself.”

Quinn bit back her laughter. She had no idea why Rachel would have a Swiss army knife in her nightstand, but the fact that Rachel had managed to hopelessly entangle herself in duct tape and wire made its presence in Rachel’s life far less disturbing. It was still questionable, but less disturbing. Or maybe more disturbing because what was someone who could get herself so hopelessly tangled in duct tape and wire doing with a Swiss army knife?

Quinn walked into the bedroom that had become more familiar to her over the past few months than the room she’d recently come back to at her childhood home. She opened the drawer and found the knife, but found a piece of paper-- a letter folded into a heart. She was too curious and she couldn’t resist opening it, especially knowing she could fold it back.

It was a love letter from some girl named Lauren to Rachel and Quinn realized with a painful thud of her heart that Rachel had a secret girlfriend. They clearly weren’t dating anymore, she and Rachel hung out so much there was no way Rachel had time for a girlfriend. But it was obvious to Quinn that the relationship had been fairly serious. The letter was heartfelt and recounted the many things this girl loved about Rachel-- things that Quinn herself found to be some of her favorite things about Rachel. It was surprising how much it hurt, and how much it stole her ability to breathe for a few seconds. Quinn skimmed it quickly and refolded it into a heart, grabbed the knife and returned to the dining room.

“Quinn! I’m still stuck!” Rachel said, and if it were possible, it looked like she was even more tangled up. “Help me!”

Quinn walked over. “What did you _do_ to yourself?”

“Don’t ask me irrelevant questions, just help me.”

“How was that question even remotely irrelevant? It’s why you’re in this situation!” She pulled at the tape but found that Rachel was really stuck.”I think I’m going to have to cut you loose,” she said. She opened the Swiss army knife.

“No!” Rachel said. “You’ll cut me and I might bleed to death.”

“I’m not going to cut you,” Quinn said irritably. But that did give her pause because it wasn’t like she was an expert with a knife. “But I’ll use scissors”

They were positioned extremely close together and Quinn heard Rachel inhale, hold her breath and then release it in little tiny gasps. Finally, Quinn cut her loose.

Rachel held up her hands. “I’m free!” she said cheerfully. She wiggled her fingers.

Quinn smiled fondly. “Yeah.”

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

“What took you so long?”

“Had to use the bathroom.”

“Oh, okay,” Rachel said with a smile.

Quinn felt guilty that Rachel trusted her so easily, but she was more relieved not to have got caught reading Rachel’s letter.

“Let’s get this thing over with,” Quinn said. “I want to get a manicure afterward.”

Rachel smiled and looked at her hands “It’s on me. I definitely need one now,” she said. She reached out to gently squeeze Quinn’s hand. “Thank you again,” she said sincerely, peering into Quinn’s eyes.

Quinn nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Of course.”

Rachel smiled at her. “Maybe I’ll even treat you to a spa pedicure if you’re particularly attentive to the assignment tonight.”

Quinn smiled back. “Oh, it’s on now,” she joked.

That had been the start of it.  
\--

A few weeks later Quinn, Rachel, Santana and Brittany were all sitting in a booth at Duffy’s Diner when a tall dark-haired girl that was instantly recognizable to Quinn, Santana and Brittany as a girl from Vocal Adrenaline approached the table with a full glass of dark-colored soda. She stopped in front of their table and Quinn, Santana and Brittany eyed her warily, but Rachel seemed more or less oblivious-- or like she was trying to ignore the girl.

“Lauren says you’re still a bitch,” the girl said flatly, and she flung the contents of the glass _and_ the glass into Rachel’s face.

Rachel had just enough time to catch to glass in her hand, but not avoid getting hit with the sticky liquid. Then the Vocal Adrenaline girl flung her arm out to catch Rachel in a hard slap to the head.

Quinn and Brittany were too stunned to react immediately, but Santana was already standing up on the booth trying to crawl over the table since she was on the inside of the booth and Brittany was on the outside.

“Bitch!” Santana shouted.

The other girl was already walking away.

Rachel stood up and put her hands on Santana’s shoulder and gently pushed her back into the booth.

“Did it get on you guys?” Rachel asked quietly.

“I’m okay,” Quinn said.

“Rachel, what the hell?” Santana demanded. She glared at the Vocal Adrenaline table, the members of whom glared back, snickering and laughing. “Let me up!” she said, struggling to get up and becoming a little disturbed when she realized that Rachel’s tiny ass midget hands were freakishly strong.

“It’s nothing,” Rachel said, grabbing a napkin and wiping at her eyes. Soda stung a little more than a Slushie. “I’m going to get cleaned up. I’ll be right back.”

Rachel scrambled away for the bathroom.

Quinn, Santana and Brittany eyed the Vocal Adrenaline table and glared at them warningly. Quinn watched as a tall blonde’s gaze followed Rachel as she walked to the bathroom.

“You’d think they would have learned when Rachel kicked four of their asses by herself. Once Berry gets back we should go over there and--”

Quinn cut Santana off. “Rachel won’t fight them.”

Santana looked angry. “Pacifists who know how to fight and don’t when they’re insulted are lame,” she huffed. She glared at the other table.

Quinn had to agree. But she knew that one of the girls at the Vocal Adrenaline table was the Lauren who’d written that love letter she found and read in Rachel’s drawer, and given the way that blonde girl’s eyes followed Rachel while Rachel was en route to the bathroom. Quinn thought she found a pretty good candidate.

Was it weird that she thought about how she and that other girl looked vaguely alike and that it sort of made her feel good? Quinn was pretty sure it was weird, but she didn’t care.

\--

“What the hell?” Santana griped.

Quinn turned in the direction where Santana was looking and watched Rachel approach the Vocal Adrenaline table. The kids were calling out insults and mocking her. Rachel ignored them and stopped in front of the tall blonde who’d been eyeing her en route to the bathroom.

Quinn watched as Rachel gave that girl a smile, a wide, toothy, bright smile, said a few words and held her hand out to the girl.

Quinn watched as that girl hesitated and then nodded slightly. She took Rachel’s hand and Rachel pulled her up only to drop the other girl’s hand again. They walked out of the restaurant together.

Quinn, Santana and Brittany were practically glued to the window as they watched Rachel and the Vocal Adrenaline girl. They walked outside and along the side of the building, but still within view. The Vocal Adrenaline girl pointed at Quinn, Santana and Brittany and Rachel turned around to give them a tiny scowl. Rachel pulled the girl further away until they were out of view.

\--

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Rachel was dating that Vocal Adrenaline girl again. It was the day after the incident in the diner that Rachel started making up excuses for why she couldn’t hang out. Santana being Santana figured the whole thing out even without being told anything. It all made sense to her. Rachel dated that blonde chick from Vocal Adrenaline, they broke up, Vocal Adrenaline girl didn’t take it so well which explained the “bitch” comments and the hurled soda pop. Then Rachel talked to Vocal Adrenaline girl and Rachel was suddenly too busy to hang out. It did not take a genius.

\--

Rachel was not particularly inclined to get back together with Lauren Prescott. The other girl was attractive and talented, but she was a little crazy and Lauren wasn’t crazy in the way that Rachel could admit to being. Lauren was serious, should-be-medicated crazy. Rachel could understand being depressed over a break-up for a few weeks or even a few months, but they’d been broken up for longer than they’d been together and Lauren was still sending her menacing text messages and calling her multiple times a day. She finally just put her phone on silent and just checked it every few hours to delete her missed call log and her text messages.

But Lauren was wearing her out with the harassment and getting her other teammates to call her up and taunt her. And of course there were random things that kept happening to her. She’d go for a run and inevitably some girl from Vocal Adrenaline would happen to be around, and she’d get eggs, beverages or other things thrown at her. Or she’d just get shoved into a bush or something.

She wasn’t really physically intimidated because she was small, but she was scrappy and she was willing and able to defend herself if it came down to it. But she was hoping it wouldn’t have to come to that because she really hated fighting. And then there were the physical threats. Lauren kept her hands clean and got her little posse of followers to do her bidding and Rachel was just weary of it. Lauren would leave to college in a few months and Rachel just thought it was easier to get back together with the other girl than deal with all the insanity.

Besides, Rachel had come to realize that though she was attracted to dark-haired men, she was generally attracted to blond women. Lauren was achingly blond and Rachel was lonely-- she didn’t even like Lauren, but she thought Lauren was enough to pass the time. She didn’t even feel bad any more that she was leading Lauren on because Lauren had treated her so terribly. She just wanted to make it stop, and she thought getting back with Lauren was the best course of action.

She was, of course, wrong because Rachel Berry possessed a lot of things-- beauty, talent, wit, and a tendency to babble, but a sense of self-preservation was not amongst them.

\--

Lauren Prescott always veered toward the possessive, jealous side but since getting back together with her, Rachel discovered that a person could _always_ be more possessive and jealous. If Rachel didn’t know better, she’d be certain Lauren was trying to rattle her so that she’d be too screwed up to compete, but glee practice was the one place that Lauren seemed comfortable about not texting or calling Rachel in. Everywhere else, and it was a constant barrage.

Rachel didn’t see the point-- it wasn’t like she had a harem of girls to choose from. The only other possibly gay girls Rachel knew other than Lauren were Brittany and Santana and those two were a package sort of deal. Rachel was not trying to get in between that.

Boys were a whole other issue, and Rachel expended a lot of energy trying to reassure Lauren that there were no boys she was interested it. It was true, of course. But she wasn’t all that interested in Lauren either.

She was just trying to keep Lauren from coming after her so much and she was trying to shake off the wrath of the Vocal Adrenaline girls, too. She wasn’t sure what Lauren told them to have made them so willing to come after her, but those Vocal Adrenaline girls _hated_ her and Rachel could totally feel it. She knew it wasn’t the truth though, because Lauren was not out of the closet.

She just thought it was easier to capitulate in this one instance because she was tired of always having to stand up on principle. Sometimes, it was just easier to give up and give in, and she was in high school, wasn’t she entitled?

Her little plan worked. She asked Lauren to get back together, Lauren accepted willingly and instantly all the taunts and bullying stopped. At least from Vocal Adrenaline. She had enough of it at school and she was sort of resigned to it, but she didn’t want any more of it outside of school. She thought she could just hold out until school was over and maybe even through the summer until Lauren would go away to college. Then she could be free. She could totally hang in there until then.

Her phone beeped and Rachel pulled it out to stare at it. She was walking in between classes and she was deeply annoyed to see Lauren text her ‘hey, you just getting out of class? I’m in mine, lol’ as though it were totally normal for a girl to keep that sort of information about her girlfriend. Lauren had her entire class schedule, down to the minute.

Rachel was suffocating. She stared at her phone, brows furrowed. She knew she had to respond or else get ten more text messages, but she didn’t want to.

It was just a few more months, she could hold on until then. What other choice did she have? Her fellow students at McKinley made her life difficult at school, her fathers made her life sad at home, did she really need some poorly-chosen ex-girlfriend to make her life miserable outside of that, too? Being with Lauren made her miserable, but Lauren made her life even more miserable when they were broken up. Rachel just thought it was easier to deal with the former.

“Hey stranger,” Quinn said, sidling up to her “I told you to wait up for me, didn’t you hear me? Why didn’t you wait?”

Quinn was smiling at her and she clearly meant nothing by it, but the question bothered Rachel anyway. And it wasn’t Quinn’s fault, because she wasn’t actually mad at Quinn, she was upset with Lauren and she was upset with herself. But Quinn was the most convenient target.

Rachel didn’t lose her temper frequently-- at least, she didn’t make it obvious. She had a _terrible_ temper, but she didn’t want to show the world how angry she was so much of the time. Besides, her anger over any given incident tended to dissipate fairly quickly, so she didn’t see the point in making obvious that she was upset or angry, she just swallowed the emotion and went about her life.  
  
Rachel Berry didn’t lose her temper all that frequently, but when she did, she tended to direct it at a convenient target rather than the person or thing she was actually mad at.

“I don’t have to do everything you say, Fabray,” Rachel snapped harshly. “You aren’t the boss of me! Stop trying to keep track of my every move!”

Quinn stared at Rachel as the brunette stormed away. Her lips curled into a sneer.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [2000 ish for this part]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight

* * *

 

Santana looked at Quinn who was staring across the hall at Rachel. Santana looked at Rachel and then back again at Quinn.

“Why are you giving Berry bitch face when she isn’t even looking?” Santana asked.

“Because _she’s_ the bitch,” Quinn griped. She’d initially been furious when Rachel snapped at her two days before, but she tried to tell herself that everyone had their bad days and she’d waited for Rachel to apologize. But Rachel never did.

She was itching to Slushie Rachel or call her something derogatory, but she didn’t want to ruin their friendship, either. But she wanted an apology or _something_.

“What did she do now?” Brittany asked.

“I told you guys,” Quinn said impatiently. “That thing she said to me like I was her stalker or something!”

Brittany rolled her eyes. “Are you still on that? I would have forgotten about it already.”

“You forget your last name!” Quinn snapped.

“HEY!” Santana snapped.

Brittany looked serene. “Do you see me giving you bitch face even though you’re being a _total_ bitch to me?” She paused. “Just forget about it.”

“I don’t _want_ to,” Quinn said petulantly.

“Do you want some cheese and the world’s smallest violin to go along with that whine?” Santana jeered.

“Shut up,” Quinn said darkly.

She narrowed her eyes and watched Rachel, still standing in front of her locker. Santana and Brittany followed Quinn’s gaze and they all watched as Rachel paused to pull her phone out of her purse. She looked at it and stomped her foot in frustration and exasperation. She hurled her phone into the locker, not seeming to care if it would damage it. She slammed her locker as hard as she could and turned to walk away.

She almost walked into Dave Karofsky who put his big beefy arms up and was clearly about to mock Rachel.

“Move it, Karofsky!” Rachel snapped, shoving past him and actually body checking him in the chest with her forearm as she did. She was stronger than she looked because he was actually knocked back a little.

Santana grinned, clearly deliriously amused. “That was awesome.”

Quinn forehead furrowed slightly. Rachel _never_ snapped like that and now that was twice in three days.

Brittany’s reaction was more pragmatic and cheerful. “Let’s break into her locker and see what crawled up her butt.”

Quinn looked at them dubiously. “How are we…”

“Trust me,” Santana said, linking arms with Brittany. “She could be a cat burglar.”

\--

“Rachel has a stalker,” Santana noted, as they huddled under the bleachers whilst skipping fourth period. She continued to look through Rachel’s phone. “ _Berry_ ,” she drawled with a wide grin. “Look!” she exclaimed, holding the picture she found in the album of Rachel’s camera phone.

Brittany squinted at it. “It’s dirty,” she noted with a grin. She paused. “She has nice breasts,” she noted. “Better than that girl she’s with,” she said. She looked at Santana who suddenly looked less amused. “But not nicer than yours,” she assured.

Quinn made a face as she realized the blonde girl in the picture with Rachel was that Vocal Adrenaline girl. Quinn snatched the phone away from Santana.

“We’re not trying to invade her privacy. Let’s just see what made her so mad. We agreed we were just going to check her call history and text messages.”

“You just want to take a closer look at Berry’s bare boobies,” Santana said, laughing because she was inadvertently alliterative.

Quinn blushed. “Don’t be stupid.”

But it was a little true.

Santana peered closely at her. “Hey, you actually--”

Just then, Rachel’s phone beeped to announce a text message. They glanced at one another and then decided to read it.

“From Lauren,” Quinn said. “’Hey, are you in class? You are, right? I’m bored, entertain me, lol,’” she read. She frowned and rolled her eyes. “This girl is an idiot.”

Santana plucked the phone away. “She’s also a stalker.” She skimmed through the phone. “She texts Berry like, ten times an hour. I’d kill someone who did that to me”

“I do that to you sometimes.”

“Yeah, but you’re telling me something, Brit. This is useless stuff.” Santana paused. “I’d have a bug up my ass about this, too.”

They read through the rest of Rachel’s text messages since they were snooping anyway. Most of it was boring and innocuous, but reading Rachel’s interactions with Lauren, Quinn could sense a boiling anger and irritation on Rachel’s part. It explained the change in attitude, but it didn’t explain why Rachel was with that girl in the first place.

\--

“Hey,” Quinn said approaching Rachel that day after glee. They’d snuck Rachel’s phone back into her locker and Rachel seemed none the wiser but Rachel had been periodically checking her phone through glee.

“Hi,” Rachel said. She was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry about snapping at you a couple days ago,” she said. “I was in a bad mood and you were a convenient target. I shouldn’t have been so terrible to you.”

“It’s okay,” Quinn said. “But is…” she hesitated. “Is everything okay?”

Rachel smiled dazzlingly at her. “Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t they be? I was just having a bad day.”

Quinn smiled back. “You sure?”

Rachel didn’t falter. “Of course.”

They walked out into the parking lot and Quinn saw a Vocal Adrenaline Range Rover and that blonde chick, Lauren at the steering wheel. She glanced at Rachel and saw the abrupt change in demeanor, but it passed just as quickly as it came.

“You’re dating her, right?” Quinn asked softly.

Rachel looked at her, startled. She thought about denying it, but Quinn was her friend now, even if she didn’t entirely trust that their friendship was real and she was wary about Quinn’s intentions. She didn’t want to be the sort of girl who denied who she really was. She’d kept her questions about her sexuality to herself while she was still figuring it out, but Lauren had cleared things up for her to the point where she was confident she was bisexual and while she wasn’t exactly proud to be dating Lauren, she wasn’t ashamed of dating a woman.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “I am.”

Hearing Rachel acknowledge it out loud was completely different from just having her suspicions. Quinn didn’t know what to say.

“Oh.”

Lauren began honking and Rachel released a tiny exasperated sigh.

“I should go,” Rachel said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Quinn.”

“Yeah.”

\--

Rachel didn’t know what she was doing. She was never someone who gave into social norms or social convention and she wasn’t someone who took the easy way out. She prided herself on that, actually. And now here she was dating a girl she didn’t love-- didn’t even like so that she wouldn’t have to deal with Vocal Adrenaline’s bullying. As if Vocal Adrenaline’s bullying was worse than what she got at McKinley. It was ridiculous.

She just didn’t want to make her life any harder than it was and Lauren was terribly high-maintenance to date, but at least all she had to do was _respond_ to Lauren and Rachel was more than capable of responding to text messages, picking up the phone or being overall attentive. She needed some space now and then, but she thought being Lauren’s reluctant girlfriend was much easier than being Lauren’s emotional punching bag after a break-up. Still, it was harder than she thought it was going to be. She thought it would make a good acting exercise, and it wasn’t. She just felt terrible and stressed.

\--

Quinn had spent so many years just watching Rachel that she could tell right away when Rachel was miserable even when Rachel did a good job pretending she wasn’t.

Rachel became increasingly more withdrawn over the next two months and finally, Quinn just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Why won’t you just dump her?” Quinn asked as she walked with Rachel into the parking lot after glee, where Lauren was already waiting for Rachel.

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t want to get into it.”

“Do you even like her?”

Rachel shrugged again. “She’s going to go away to school soon.”

Quinn was exasperated. “You’re not answering my question.”

“I have to go.”

\--

Quinn persisted the next day. She grabbed Rachel by the arm and pulled her into the janitor’s closet right before the warning bell rang for their first period class.

“Quinn, we’re going to be tardy.”

“Are you okay?” Quinn asked quietly.

“Of course,” Rachel said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You can do better than her,” Quinn said softly.

“Quinn, I am uncertain why you feel the need to pull me into a very claustrophobic location two minutes before our first period class starts to discuss something of this nature.”

“She’s making you _miserable_.”

Rachel did not refute it. She was, in fact, miserable. “I don’t see how this is any of your business.”

Quinn hesitated. “I like you,” Quinn admitted morosely. She’d planned on either taking this secret with her to the grave or telling Rachel about it in a few years once she got over it, like it was all such a joke. But she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

She didn’t _want_ to like Rachel-- Rachel was a lot shorter than she was and she thought the sex, if it were ever to be had, might be awkward. But there were a myriad of other things wrong with Rachel, too, like her anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsiveness which pointed to a myriad of psychological issues that Quinn wasn’t sure she was willing or able to deal with. Rachel always thought she was right and could never admit she was wrong. She was really _really_ obstinate, and that was never a good thing in a girlfriend.

But Quinn couldn’t deny the fact that she’d harbored a crush on Rachel since the seventh grade. And she couldn’t stave off the jealousy she felt that some girl Rachel didn’t even particularly like got to date Rachel. And she couldn’t deny the fact that she was worried that Rachel seemed so miserable.

Rachel stared at her for a minute and then yanked her arm away from Quinn. “I don’t believe you,” she said flatly. She looked angry.

Quinn’s eyes widened. That was not the response she’d been expecting. She thought maybe Rachel would admit she had feelings back (it could happen) or Rachel would let her down gently, but she hadn’t anticipated anger.

“But--”

Rachel glared at her. “I’m not stupid or naïve, Quinn.” Her eyes narrowed. “I should have known better than to believe your attempts at friendship were genuine and sincere,” she said darkly.

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you think I’m naïve?” Rachel asked. “Was this your plan all along? You, Santana and Brittany pretend to be my friends so that you can compile information about me and then try to use it against me? Do you think I’m so--”

“This isn’t a trick,” Quinn whispered. “I _like_ you. I’ve liked you since the seventh grade. And I’m not saying you should date me instead of her, I’m saying she makes you miserable and you could do better.”

“We’re late for class.”

Rachel pushed past Quinn and left. Quinn sank into a crouch and wondered what it was about her that people could reject so easily. She was still more or less liked at school, and she could honestly say that it was through glee she met friends who were more genuine than the ones she had before, and it was through glee that she became true friends with Brittany and Santana rather than frenemies. But when it came to important people in her life-- like her parents, her sister or even Finn, she just got cast aside so easily. She understood it with Finn, of course, but they’d loved each other so much once she thought maybe he could find it in his heart to forgive her enough to be friends. He was there for the birth of her daughter, and he was nice to her, but there wasn’t the warmth and affection she’d come to enjoy from him.

And now Rachel who was known for being accepting of everyone, even of people who didn’t like her, just completely rejected her.

\--

Rachel avoided Quinn, Santana and Brittany and their contact was minimal-- just in shared classes and in glee. But Rachel pointedly ignored them, despite the hurt blue-eyed glances Brittany cast her way.

“I don’t get it,” Brittany said unhappily. “I thought we were friends now. Why won’t she look at us?”

Santana put her arm around her. “I guess we just weren’t, Brit.”

\--

Rachel tried to hold on, she really did. It was May, and almost the end of the school year and she tried to tell herself it was just going to be for a few more months. Lauren was going to Berklee College of Music in Boston, but sadly, she was staying in Lima for the summer, so Rachel knew she had a few more months until she was free of the other girl.

She really thought she could do it, but Lauren just wore her down.

She snapped one night-- said mean, but factual things. And of course Lauren cried and became angry and history repeated itself because she felt Lauren slap her. Once again, Rachel let her for a while because she felt like she sort of deserved it and she could see it from Lauren’s point of view.

She knew it was worse this time around and that her plan had been incredibly foolish.

She showed Lauren to the door.

“I’ll make you wish you’ve never been born,” Lauren swore.

Rachel had wished that upon herself on more than one occasion in her life and so she did not take the threat particularly seriously.

“I’ve been known to wish that on occasion,” Rachel conceded.

“I’ll make you wish you were dead.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [3000-ish this part]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight.

* * *

 

It was a week later Rachel lay on her stomach in her bedroom. She was trying to flip onto her back and she’d been trying for a while, but it was just too painful. She couldn’t move, and she found that even breathing was a concentrated effort.

It was extremely quiet once Lauren and her posse of Vocal Adrenaline girls left.

Rachel couldn’t believe how stupid she was to have opened the door, and she was mortified that she’d been beaten so resoundingly. But when she looked in the peephole, all she saw was Lauren, and she thought she owed Lauren an explanation. Lauren must have unlocked the front door because they were talking in her bedroom when the other girls from Vocal Adrenaline came inside and Rachel knew she was in trouble.

Still, she was extremely angry with herself for getting beaten up to this caliber even though she’d been vastly outnumbered.

After years of discipline and hard work, she got her ass kicked. Hard. If she weren’t so scared, she’d be really upset by that. Krav maga was allegedly taught to the Israeli Mossad and she thought some deadly form of combat would at least protect her a little bit. But it’s not like she was going to be teaching any krav maga classes, so maybe she got a little too full of it, a little too careless about her own ability to protect herself. Still, she thought learning that lesson this way was a little much.

It was extremely quiet, but she heard the scratching and scrambling sound that plagued her for the six years she’d lived in this house. She mainly heard it at night, when she was in bed, alone. Somewhere between being awake and dreaming, she’d hear that sound-- that desperate scrambling and she was sure there was an animal or something loose in the walls.

Her fathers chuckled and said it was the sound of the house settling, but she was adamant that it was something alive searching, looking for something. It sounded so desperate and Rachel wanted to rip the walls apart to help it because she knew what it felt like to search desperately for something, and being so desperate to find it that she’d die trying. She still felt like that now.

After a few persistent weeks of claiming she couldn’t sleep because of the animals in the walls of the house, her fathers finally got annoyed and snapped at her. She shut up and she never brought it up again, but she’d hear the sound-- persistently.

It got better over the years and she heard it less and less. It’d been months since she last heard that persistent scratching and she just assumed that the animal died in there and once the smell hit, she’d finally be vindicated with her fathers because then they’d have to do something. But no smell ever came.

And now that sound was back and it was the only sound she could hear. She thought her phone was ringing, but that persistent scratching and scrambling was all she could really hear. She tried to get up to get her phone, but it was just too hard. She couldn’t move. It hurt so much and she was really afraid. She was desperate to get away, too. Her stomach was hurting so much, she was desperate to crawl out of her own skin. She didn’t know a few stomps and punches to the stomach, no matter how brutal, would hurt for so long after the blows were dealt.

She knew it would be hours before her fathers got home. She wasn’t sure if they’d even find her though, up in her bedroom. More often than not, she was the one who greeted them when they got home, if she was even awake. They never came to check on her.

She was alone, and she was genuinely afraid for the first time in a long time. Everything hurt, and she just wanted it to go away. She didn’t know how she was going to get herself out of this.

She braced herself for pain and she flipped onto her back with an agonized cry. The pain was excruciating and blinding and so she closed her eyes and hoped it would stop. She knew she would have to get herself out of this and she was just trying to work up the fortitude to do it.

\--

Quinn, Santana and Brittany glared at the Vocal Adrenaline girls laughing and high-fiving one another in Duffy’s parking lot. They all looked a little worse for the wear, but seemed like they were in good spirits.

Rachel’s girl, Lauren, the tall blonde, looked a little upset, however.

“I think she was really hurt,” Lauren said. “We shouldn’t have left her there.”

“Come on,” a dark-eyed brunette scoffed. “She knows how to take care of herself.” She grinned at a redhead. “Ginger over there can tell you that girl can handle her own because she kicked Ginger’s ass, right?”

The redhead glared. “Shut up.”

When the fight started, Quinn resented Santana’s inability to _not_ talk shit. But Quinn would come to be grateful for Santana’s inability to walk away from a fight, particularly when provoked, because when one of the other Vocal Adrenaline girls threatened to kick their asses the way they kicked “their mini poodle teammate’s ass,” and Quinn knew Rachel was in trouble.

The fight was over almost as soon as it started and Quinn, Santana and Brittany were in a car, breaking the speed limit to get to Rachel’s house.  
  
\--

When Rachel woke up, it was because she felt someone touching her face. Soft hands.

Quinn was hovering over her, crying. “Rachel. Rachel, oh God. Rachel, wake up.”

Rachel cocked open one eye with a groan. “I’ve been pummeled. Let me sleep.”

It hurt to talk, but she loved to talk and she was okay with being in pain if it meant she could do something she loved.

Quinn felt relief wash over her. “Rachel! She hugged Rachel fiercely but drew back when Rachel released a pained moan. “Did that hurt?”

Rachel was grouchy, but she thought she was kind of entitled. “No, that was a cry of joy. I’m ecstatic.”

Quinn swallowed hard. “Don’t be mean,” she said quietly. She put her hand, gently on Rachel’s forehead when she saw Rachel struggling to get up. “Rachel,” she said quietly. “I think you’re really hurt,” she whispered. Actually she knew Rachel was pretty badly hurt, but she didn’t want to alarm her. There was blood coming out of Rachel’s mouth, smeared across her teeth and it wasn’t just from Rachel’s burst lip or cut gums. Quinn tried not to panic. “Just lay there for a minute. We called the police and an ambulance.”

Rachel groaned. “Just let me sleep for a little bit. Don’t call an ambulance, it’s really expensive… my dads will be so mad at me…”

“Rachel…just…just shut up. But stay awake.”

“Then why won’t you let me sleep?”

Quinn brushed her hand across Rachel’s bruised cheek. “You will, just not right now. Stay with me, okay? Even if you insult me. Just stay awake.”

“Your hair looks unkempt.”

Quinn chuckled softly and tried to smooth her hair out. “That’s what happens when some bitches from Vocal Adrenaline pull on it.”

“Mine must look quite unkempt, too.”

“It does,” Quinn confirmed. “But I think I can get over it.”

“Mmm.” Rachel’s eyes rolled back into their sockets for a moment until they refocused.

“Rachel,” Quinn said urgently. “Don’t fall asleep.”

“Just give me a few minutes, Quinn.”

“Rachel, _no_. Don’t fall asleep.”

Rachel smiled sleepily. “You’ll just have to forgive me,” she said. It didn’t even really hurt anymore, she was just sleepy.

Her eyes closed. And her last thought was that maybe she wouldn’t always have to be the one to help herself after all.

\--

Quinn, Brittany and Santana sat in the waiting room at the Emergency Room and had no idea what to do.

“We should call her dads,” Brittany said, finally.

“I don’t know their numbers,” Quinn said quietly. “I don’t even know what they do so that we could track them down at work. And I already left a message on the answering machine at their house.” She glanced at Santana. “Do you?”

Santana shook her head, solemnly. “No.” She cradled her head with her hands for a moment. “We should call school, and see if they can look at the emergency card.”

Quinn pulled her phone out to look at the clock. “It’s seven pm,” she said quietly. “There’s no one going to be there.”

“What about Sylvester?” Brittany suggested. “Even if she’s not there, I know she could get into the main office.”

\--

Sylvester came through for them, showing up with an emergency card that turned out to have phone numbers that were no longer in service. The only serviceable number was the Berrys’ landline and only the answering machine picked up there.

She held back on the sarcastic comments except to express that if they were crying, it better not be because they’re the ones that lost the fight. Santana assured Sylvester that the three of them managed to fight off eight other girls pretty quickly. Coach Sylvester pointed out that statistically, that was not all that impressive, but she took a seat near them anyway and bought them a few bottles of water saying that hydration was important for winners.  
\--

Rachel was finally stabilized enough to visit, but only one person could see her at a time.

\--

In the hospital some doctor with long blond hair and hazel eyes touched Rachel’s cheek. Rachel opened her mouth to tell this doctor that such touching was highly inappropriate but then the doctor spoke.

“Relax, don’t fight me.” She smiled reassuringly. “Trust me. It’s going to be okay.”

She reminded Rachel of Quinn, and she could almost hear Quinn saying the same thing. Rachel relaxed and gave in. She closed her bleary eyes. “Okay,” she said softly.

“See?” Quinn told the blue-eyed nervous looking intern. “Don’t try to strong-arm her,” she said warningly. “She just needed to relax.” She stepped away from Rachel to let the guy do what he needed to do and watched him anxiously as he checked on Rachel.

\--

Rachel’s fathers showed up the next morning, looking worried and frazzled.

“We just checked the answering machine this morning,” one of them explained. “We just heard.”

The nurse he talked to looked skeptical. She’d worked a graveyard shift and her patience was thin. “What did you think when she wasn’t home last night?”

Quinn wanted an answer to that, too.

\--

The damage was pretty bad-- a concussion, three broken ribs, punctured lung, a couple of broken toes and the excruciating pain she felt came from all the bleeding into her stomach. Rachel was extremely unhappy by the way her body had betrayed her. She’d been so good to it and it completely failed when she needed it to be strong. And she looked _terrible_ , one mottled bruise and she needed stitches from a cut in her eyebrow that would likely scar. She was going to be in the hospital for a while.

Still, Rachel thought that for being in a fight with eight other girls, she came out all right. But she knew that New Directions was pretty well screwed for Regionals and she was pretty furious about that.

Her doctor was blunt with her.

“Quinn saved your life.”

Rachel could concede that.

“Thank you,” Rachel rasped, when she had a moment alone with Quinn.

“I told you I liked you, stupid,” Quinn said with a little sob.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said softly. “I didn’t want to believe you because I hoped too much that it was true.”

And lately, she’d just been too used to having her hopes crushed, she didn’t want that one to be crushed, too. It was just easier to believe that Quinn was the sort of person who would play a trick on her like that than believe Quinn could actually like her.

\--

Shelby appeared one day, sitting next to her bedside. Rachel just opened her eyes and there she was.

Shelby smiled when she saw Rachel was awake and hesitantly reached out to touch Rachel’s cheek.

Rachel winced and moved her head away. “Don’t,” she said softly. “It hurts.”

In so many ways.

“Did my girls really do this?” Shelby asked quietly.

The police told her that it was, but looking at how injured Rachel was, she couldn’t fathom how girls she’d trained and mentored could have done this to another girl. She couldn’t imagine how so many of her girls would have ganged up on just _one_ girl and that girl was her daughter. She couldn’t imagine girls she taught just leaving a clearly severely injured girl behind, alone.

‘My girls.’

The words echoed through Rachel’s mind. She was Shelby’s daughter, and Shelby didn’t want a relationship with her, but those girls who did this to her were ‘my girls.’ It was obvious Shelby didn’t care about her at all, she was probably just trying to keep her team of girls from getting in trouble.

Rachel closed her eyes again and pretended to go to sleep. It wasn’t so hard because she was tired.

“Keep her away from me,” Rachel pleaded to Quinn once Shelby left. “Don’t let her in to see me again. Please,” Rachel begged.

Her fathers seemed more preoccupied about her health and didn’t even question why Shelby was around. But she didn’t want to get Shelby in trouble by asking her fathers to keep Shelby away from her, because then all sorts of questions would get raised about why they were in contact at all when Shelby signed a contract agreeing not to contact Rachel until she was 18. She didn’t want Shelby to get in trouble because Shelby’s appearance in her life had answered a lot of questions. But she didn’t want Shelby involved in her life anymore, especially not now.

So she asked Quinn because she knew Quinn would help.

Quinn did what she was asked and it only took a few times of her barring the doorway to Rachel’s door for Shelby to give up.  
\--

Her fathers were incredibly attentive and weepingly apologetic while she was in the hospital. But Rachel wondered what she could possibly do, short of being assaulted or breaking limbs, for her fathers to give her that kind of attention again.

(Once she was healed up, things with her fathers went back to normal, which was exactly what she expected. But that took a while and she had to admit she was closer to her fathers after the experience than before. )

\--

Both Vocal Adrenaline and New Directions had to drop out that year at Regionals. Vocal Adrenaline’s team was down significantly and New Directions was one member short.

Rachel was outraged. “This must have been their plan all along! To make us ineligible. The fact that they’ve inadvertently become sabotaged by their own plans is only poetic justice!”

After all, she was still in the hospital when Regionals were held.

“Berry, you almost died,” Puck pointed out.

“They’re well aware of the fact that failure and death are equal to me!”

Puck shook his head and muttered something about crazy, hot-looking Jews.

“Are you sure you couldn’t like someone less insane?” Santana whispered to Quinn.

Quinn shrugged. She did _try_ to like someone less insane, it was just that she failed at it.

“Quinn, back me up on this,” Rachel said.

“Failure and death are equal,” Quinn deadpanned dutifully.

She was rewarded by a grin from Rachel who failed to sense the sarcasm that everyone else in the room picked up on immediately.

Quinn shook her head, wondering if dating Rachel Berry was always going to be like this.

\--

“You do realize that not being able to perform at Regionals is _not_ worse than death, right?” Quinn asked Rachel when the blonde drove Rachel home from the New Directions dinner to mourn not being able to perform at Regionals at Mr. Schue’s house.

“If I were dead, at least I would not have to be here to stew in my own failure.”

Quinn sighed. “I don’t know why I like you. I really wish I didn’t.”

Rachel smiled smugly. “You tried for years to suppress and repress your love for me, but you failed.”

“Don’t pretend you aren’t glad I failed in that endeavor, feigning an emotion doesn’t make it true,” Quinn said, and then paused when she realized with abject horror that was something Rachel would say. “And no one said anything about love. I said I _liked_ you.”

Rachel gave her a genuine grin. “Given enough time, I believe this arrangement could blossom into love,” she said simply.

Quinn grudgingly, reluctantly agreed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel knows how to fight.

**Title:** Waiting  
**Author:** Sulkygeek  
**Rating:** R  
**Length:** 22916 over 7 parts [2000ish this part]  
**Spoilers:** through Journey  
**Summary:** Rachel knows how to fight.

* * *

 

The next year New Directions trounced Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals and Rachel grabbed Quinn into a victorious hug.

“This is our last year, and it counts the most,” Rachel told Quinn.

Quinn chuckled. “Yeah.”

Rachel felt someone stare at her and she looked over to see Shelby who gave her a small smile and an awkward wave.

Rachel gave her a slight acknowledging nod, but she linked her arm with Quinn’s to walk away. They had celebrating to do.

\--

When they left Lima, they left Lima together.

“Bye Dad. Bye Daddy,” Rachel said dutifully hugging each of her fathers.

“Our little girl,” one of them said softly. “I can’t believe how fast you grew up.”

“I’m not so little anymore,” Rachel said quietly.  
What she really wanted to say was ‘I’m not your little girl anymore’ because she really wanted them to see her for who she was.

But she was pretty certain they already knew.

\--

Quinn’s mother was sad to let her leave.

“What am I going to do without you?” she asked mournfully “I’ll be so alone without you.”

“You’ll be fine, Mom,” Quinn assured. “You’re strong. And I’ll call all the time.”

Quinn felt her mother cup her cheeks. “I just want you to be better than me,” Judy Fabray said softly, words tinged with regret.

“I’m going to try,” Quinn said quietly.

It made her mother flinch, just a little. But then she smiled.

“I know,” Judy said.

\--

Hands intertwined, they broke the speed limit leaving Lima.

\--

“And we’ve been together ever since,” Rachel said. “Except for Quinn’s lamentable lapse in judgment in the middle of our sophomore year in college in which she thought pastures without my presence were greener than pastures with it. She was, of course, resoundingly disabused of that notion and after an appropriate amount of groveling and acts of contrition, I took her back--”

“Hey,” Quinn interrupted. “I may have groveled, but then I made _you_ grovel for moving in with Charlie Cohen while we were broken up and acting like you were married to him.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Rachel said dismissively. She turned back to their friends to resume the story of how she and Quinn came to be a couple. “I still have a scar,” Rachel said, pulling her hair up to show a pale white scar on the back of her neck from where one of the Vocal Adrenaline girls cut her with a particularly pointy spike from a goth bracelet. “And in my eyebrow,” Rachel said, pointing to it.

“That looks cool,” Jack said.

“Yeah, scars are sexy,” Sharon confirmed.

“Anyway,” Quinn said. “Rach was in the hospital for a week, and after she got out, we started to hang out again and then here we are today.”

“And even though I had a concussion, broken ribs, broken toes amongst other injuries, in retrospect, Quinn and I were unlikely to have gotten together without that day due to the fact we were somewhat upset with one another prior to the incident.”

“Unlikely?” Quinn interrupted. “Really? Because the way I remember it, you claimed you had an overwhelming lust for me which you were trying not to succumb to with little success. You would have sought me out even without you being almost murdered.”

Rachel looked unruffled. “If you’ll recall, I was under the influence of painkillers.”

“That just means you were more honest.”

Rachel chuckled and looked at their friends. “Nothing was worth that day,” she admitted softly in a wistful sort of way that made one believe she was nostalgic for the time she was assaulted. “I won’t say I enjoyed it, but--”

“Good,” Quinn interrupted. “Because you’re issue-y enough without that being one more thing I need to deal with when it comes to you.”

Rachel huffed. “You’re interrupting.”

“Sorry”

“In any case, though I am not nostalgic for that day or for the subsequent period of recovery, I do feel that it was completely worth it. All of it.” She looked at Quinn. “Because it finally brought me to you, and you were the one I should have been with all along.”

“And just think,” Quinn said. “If you’d just been able to admit that to yourself, you could have spared yourself the broken ribs and physical therapy.”

“I thought we agreed not to bring that up, due to the purely hypothetical nature of that premise.”

“I agreed to nothing.”

Rachel and Quinn exchanged a smile and their friends, long familiar with that look, made a hasty exit.

“We chased them away,” Rachel noted when she pulled her lips away from Quinn long enough to realize their friends were gone and they were alone.

Quinn shrugged. “So?”

“I was just making a comment,” Rachel said with a grin. “I’m actually rather relieved we won’t have to ask them to leave so I can be alone with you.”

Quinn lightly drummed her fingers over the scar in Rachel’s eyebrow, like she was playing a piano. It was hardly detectable unless you looked, but Rachel was frequently self-conscious about it, even though she’d had seven years to get accustomed to it.

“Was it really worth it?” Quinn asked quietly.

Rachel was exasperated. “Of course. I’ve been telling you this for years.”

“Because it led you to me.”

Rachel’s smile was affectionate. “Because it made me realize that I had someone to watch over me, and that person was you.”

Quinn chuckled. “Well, of course I have to watch over you. Your mouth takes up three quarters of your body and you’re incapable of keeping it shut. You need someone to watch your back to keep people from coming after you.”

Rachel smiled. “I can handle my own,” she said. She squeezed Quinn’s hand. “I’m just glad I don’t have to.”

“No, you don’t,” Quinn said.

“And neither do you.”

“No, I don’t,” Quinn said with a smile.

Their lives weren’t perfect-- they were two years out of college and had a truckload of student loans to pay up, they’d moved eight times in the six years they lived in Manhattan and dealt with crappy roommates and crooked landlords.

There were fights-- harsh, angry, enraged, tearful fights over ridiculous things like whose turn it was to clean the bathroom and the merits of soy.

There were abrasive, hurtful, pleading, painful fights over things like Quinn’s inability to see herself the way Rachel saw her and just accept that she was loveable and kind even if she’d been rejected by her family and that a few bitchy comments, however cruel, didn’t eradicate all the goodness inside her.

There were screaming, begging, aching fights over Rachel’s inability to see herself the way Quinn saw her and just _relax_ and eat a cookie, sleep in or skip a couple of hours on the elliptical and all that self-deprivation and self-punishment would ultimately only hurt herself.

Some days were wearier than others and what they wanted one day wasn’t necessarily what they wanted the next. But they knew they wanted each other.

“What would you have done if we’d never be able to establish this relationship?” Rachel asked. “I admit that it is not a scenario which you would want to entertain given your deep and abiding love for me…” Rachel’s eyes narrowed when she saw Quinn roll her eyes. “But I am curious about what you would have done if we’d never gotten together.”

Quinn snorted. “I would have left Lima and found someone else.” She winced when Rachel smacked her knee in outrage. “What, I would have!”

“If you’re implying that I am expendable and replace--”

“But I think I would have thought of you a lot,” Quinn said. “And I probably wouldn’t be as happy even though I also probably wouldn’t know I could be happier with you. My life would have gone on, but it wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling as it is now.”

Rachel crossed her arms. “I suppose that’s fair,” she grumbled.

“You wanted me to say that I would either have lived a lonely life and died alone surrounded by my thirteen cats that ate my face before the smell reached the neighbors, or like, I would have moved heaven and earth to find you and bring us together, didn’t you?”

“Of course!” Rachel snapped.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Would you be eaten by cats or move mountains?”

“If we’re speaking hypothetically in a situation in which you and I were never together, I would not have moved mountains to get to you,” Rachel admitted. “Stop scowling,” she chided. “You’re going to need Botox, and you saw what that did to your mother.” She winced when she felt Quinn give her a punch on the arm. “However, if we were to be separated now, I would crawl miles on my knees through broken glass just to move a mountain piece by piece with my bare hands to get back to you.”

Rachel looked inordinately pleased with herself.

Quinn rolled her eyes, even if she was secretly touched. “You know, when you do this who-loves-whom more thing, it’s cheating when you give yourself more time to prepare than you give me.”

“Love means not only loving me in spite of my faults, but because of them.”

Quinn sighed. “What happens when I love you because I’m afraid you’ll disobey the restraining order? I mean, if you’d crawl miles on your knees through broken glass to move a mountain piece by piece, who knows what you’d do when the obstacles aren’t quite so extreme and insurmountable?”

Rachel looked pleased. “While I found that to be incredibly insulting, I am tickled by the way you put it.”

Quinn snorted, but she smiled affectionately. Rachel did get turned on by big words which is why Quinn always kept a thesaurus handy. “I love you even though you’re anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive and crazy.” She paused. “I think I always will.”

“And I love you even though you’re occasionally bitchy and that your first response in an argument is to say things that are emotionally decimating rather than speaking rationally. Though I would find this to be unacceptable in anyone else, I find it endearing in you and will always love you for it.”

“Please don’t neglect that to put that in our marriage vows,” Quinn said dryly.

Rachel smiled. “My marriage vows to you will be very simple. I already have them all thought out. When the time comes to make our commitment official on paper, I will be ready”

Quinn looked at her skeptically. “Simple? You? What are you going to say?” she challenged.

Rachel smiled and reached out to cup Quinn’s cheeks between her hands. “Everything I dreamed and need is right here in my hands. What we have is the most important thing in my life and there is _nothing_ I wouldn’t give up if you asked me to.”

Quinn swallowed hard and blinked back the sudden tears that stung her eyes. She pulled away from Rachel and settled into Rachel, resting her head on Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel played with Quinn’s hair.

“I was already planning on having sex with you tonight,” Quinn said, her voice still thick with emotion. “You didn’t have to resort to such heavy-handed antics.”

Rachel’s chest moved in a soft hum as she chuckled. “I was just making sure.”

“I love you, Rach. Even when I don’t always show it the right way.”

“I know, Quinn. I don’t always show it the right way either, but I love you, too.”

Their relationship was far from perfect or ideal, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t get better-- it got better every day, and they were okay with waiting for the day when the good days tended to outnumber the bad days. It was sort of even right now. But it was enough.

And not all of their dreams were coming true right away, but that didn’t mean their dreams never would. Their dreams were just waiting in line to come true and they were both okay with the wait. The dreams that had already been achieved-- and there were so many of them, were enough.

The End


End file.
